School’s wrapped up, eighth graders have finished their Montana History trips, and the weather might actually be warm enough to reach some of the higher elevation bits of history. For those of us exploring from armchairs though, it’s time to read about Henry Plummer, and about Edward Stahl if we’re trying to keep the history more local.
When Henry Plummer Ran Montana’s Justice System
On May 24, 1863, the citizenry of Bannack elected Henry Plummer as their sheriff. Henry was personable, had an excellent presentation of self, and was experienced in law enforcement. He had been elected sheriff in Nevada City, California, in 1856. The next year he was convicted of second degree murder, for killing an unarmed man – shades of Derek Chauvin and George Floyd. Henry did six months at San Quentin before California’s governor pardoned him. As I write, Attorney General Merrick Garland is cited “Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department,” Garland said Friday…
A Spy on Pinkham Creek
“It was in 1932 that Charlie Powell, ranger at Rexford, overheard a conversation at a trail camp between two Pinkham Ridgers, indicating that the Ridge-runners planned some incendiarism. He promptly reported this to me. The Ridge-runners were a rather canny clan who migrated from the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky years earlier and took homesteads on Pinkham Creek and Pinkham Ridge. Their chief pursuits were stealing tie timber and moonshining, but occasionally they would set a few fires, “just for the hell of it – to bother the ‘Govment’ men,” and also to provide a few days’…
Edward Stahl at Pipe Creek
Edward Stahl shared a bit about his early days with the Forest Service. This segment starts with his elevation to the Supervisor’s office in Libby. I hadn’t realized that Stahl was a seasonal – I never met a Forest Service seasonal who wound up with a mountain named for him. It looks like he was responsible for the route over Dodge Creek to the Yaak. The whole story is at npshistory.com. I was laid off October 1st and met a party from Eureka and joined them hunting goat at Bowman Lake. We had an early snowstorm and crossed…
Stahl and the 1910 Burn
“Although forty years have passed since the time of the great forest fires in North Idaho the date is not easily forgotten. On August 20, 1910, a forest fire raced unchecked for one hundred miles in two days, to devastate one million acres of wilderness in the Idaho Panhandle and northwestern Montana. Eighty-seven persons perished in the flames and countless numbers of forest creatures were destroyed. If you could see a little black bear clinging, high in a blazing tree and crying like a frightened child you could perceive on a very small scale what happened to the…
Trego's Mountain Ear 
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