Trego's Mountain Ear

I am happy that we voted for a study commission.  Now, my only fear is that the commission’s study will be too limited.  Back in 1909, when Lincoln County was split off Flathead, it was (based on the technology of the time) a well planned structure for a county.  Everything was supposed to flow into the Kootenai (ignore the slight blunder that included part of the Stillwater).  The (then new) Great Northern Railroad connected the new county from Stryker to Idaho.   The mail train paused twice daily at every tiny post office along the rail.   Lincoln County was well planned – and that early planning served well for 60 years.

In 1909, nobody predicted that the Corps of Engineers would dam the Kootenai just upstream from Jennings Rapids.  By 1970, the physical structure, the connections in Lincoln County had changed.  I didn’t particularly notice – I worked for the Soil Conservation Service, across the county, and Highway 37 was new, and smooth, and easy driving for my shortbed government Chevy.

But the change was there.  The town of Warland no longer exists.  Kootenai Gardens was inundated.  Rexford has moved to the high ground.  The railroad no longer connects the county – it comes in at Stryker, curves past Trego, then thunders past a few Trego ranches that it maimed in the late sixties, and stops only in Libby for Amtrak.  Neither the river nor the railroad connects the county anymore.  For the past 50 years, Lincoln County has been two separate and different population areas.

It wasn’t such a big thing in the Seventies – despite the separated populations, the historical connection continued.  J. Neils was gone, but the successor corporation continued to link employees and former employees from Libby to New Rexford.  Libby was healthy, with the Mill, the Plywood plant, the Zonolite mine, the mine near Troy.  And as the Eighties came to a close, so did the mercantile connections between North County and South County.

Politically, Libby had been pretty much a Union, Democrat town.  When the mill closed, the mines shut down, it no longer had the industry for the unions to flourish.  Instead of having an economy based on private corporations with Union employees, Libby became increasingly dominated by the regular jobs of public employment.   Interestingly enough, it became a Republican stronghold. We can see it in the voting patterns – the Libby block tends to vote to reelect the county commissioner from North County, while North County tends to vote in favor of a new commissioner every six years.  Not saying it’s good or bad – just that it’s a reality.

The study commission will need to look at the 500 pound gorilla (or sasquatch if you prefer).  Our county has two separate populations – and the northern folks pay a disproportionate portion of the county’s taxes, while Libby is home to most of the folks whose livelihoods come from those county tax dollars.

In 1909, affordable housing meant enough cash to cover homestead filing fees and an ax, a hammer, and a froe to build a log cabin.  In 2024, we’re looking at entry level homes on forty acres at half a million.  The study question isn’t the same.

Long story short: we need a study commission that will look at the basic structural dysfunction of Lincoln County, and answer the hard question:  Can we afford to continue business as usual, or do we need to look at splitting into two counties.  The answer, like the voting patterns for countywide incumbents, is probably not the same in Libby as it is for the North County voters.