I listened to a comment about the median household income in Trego – and defaulted to my professional statement before retirement – “That’s American Community Survey data, and it’s not very good for small communities.” When I checked it, the $36,458 median household income for Trego translates as “somewhere between $27,478 and $45,438. ACS data has its uses, but it has to be used with a lot of caution.
So here’s a little ACS data on our communities – you can check for margin of error (MOE) here. I wouldn’t recommend using any of the numbers without reviewing MOE – but just sharing the data shows the variance. It’s safe to admit that my household was one selected for the ACS. With two retirees at home, I didn’t hurt Trego’s school enrollment rate, I raised the percentage of bachelors degree or above, kept the employment rate down, and raised the median age.
Trego CDP
Fortine CDP
Eureka CCD
Rexford Town
Population
515
317
6,470
78
Median Age
60.5
27.9
50.1
53.3
Median Household Income
$36,458
$68,036
$40,827
$30,481
Bachelor’s Degree or more
26.10%
19.20%
22.40%
0.00%
Veterans
6.80%
16.20%
12.90%
16.80%
Poverty
9.50%
5.20%
20.40%
23.60%
School Enrollment
97.80%
72.30%
81.90%
100%
Employment Rate
40.20%
59.50%
38.30%
20.60%
Housing Units
283
177
3,716
73
Occupied Housing Units
237
144
2,796
46
Disabilities
31.10%
18.80%
26.70%
65.90%
Children under 18
9.30%
32.50%
22.10%
13%
It looks like the Fortine sample drew some younger respondents. Eureka CCD with a larger population and larger sample is probably closer to correct, and the town of Rexford data is probably close to useless because the small sample size almost guarantees sampling bias
It takes no complex research to learn which part of the county pays the most taxes. The total market value and taxable values are available here and the webpage is fairly easy to use. We may have to resort to the 2010 Census to find numbers that would allow us to calculate the tax burden on a per capita basis – but the data are never perfect for the potential secessionist.
High School District 13 – Lincoln County High School – pretty well covers the north county (excepting the Yaak-Sylvanite area that is part of Troy’s High School District 1. Libby’s High School District covers the area that rules the county.
2021
Market
Taxable
Percentage
Libby K-12
$1,167,764,915
15,285,095
36.73%
HS-1 (Troy)
$561,686,888
7,578,222
18.21%
HS-13 (Eureka)
$1,324,462,346
18,742,346
45.05%
County-wide
$3,053,914,149
41,606,036
100%
2014
Market
Taxable
Percentage
Libby K-12
$744,585,246
13,613,729
38.44%
HS-1 (Troy)
$354,443,745
7,059,404
19.93%
HS-13 (Eureka)
$705,406,090
14,743,434
41.63%
County-wide
$1,804,435,081
35,416,567
100%
Extrapolating a line from 2 points isn’t the most accurate way to project a trend line. It does give a quick trend-line . . . and from this data, it looks like HS-13’s taxable value percentage is growing at almost half a percentage each year. Somewhere around 2031, the north end of the county will be over half the county’s tax base.
One way of looking at the situation is joy that we aren’t receiving all the government our taxes support. In general, our Libbyan bureaucrats don’t spend a lot of time in the north end of the county. On the other hand, the population in the north end isn’t growing quickly enough that we’ll be able to outvote them in my projected lifespan.
Perhaps it is time to get serious on the idea of county 57.
As we prepared to get back to Trego, one of the things we anticipated was getting Canadian TV channels again. It had been about a quarter-century since we enjoyed that particular form of entertainment – so we bought a special, long range antenna to bring them in. Sadly, developments and improvements as we passed into the third millennium eliminated the repeater stations that had made it possible in the eighties.
Still, the goal wasn’t forgotten – merely filed away for later use. Finally, I found a search routine that brought Canadian TV series from the past to my computer screen. Here are some of the enjoyable Canadian programs I’ll be enjoying during the long evenings of the upcoming winter.
Corner Gas – This program went on for five years, then had about three years of an animated version, centering on the minimal life of a gas station/convenience store operator in Dog River, Saskatchewan, 40 miles from anywhere. Search it out on youtube – it’s worth watching.
Kim’s Convenience – the parental Kims (Korean immigrants) run a convenience store somewhere in Toronto. It’s a bit more current than Corner Gas, but takes humor into a few politically incorrect areas. I didn’t find much on youtube – a few outtakes, but it’s just a search away. It ran from 2016 until last April. The scripts were written by the same writers that did Corner Gas.
There are 72 episodes in Due South – the first episode is available on youtube. It’s a combination of comedy and crime, and looks like a story about an RCMP guy working with a Chicago cop.
It looks like Trailer Park Boys is also available – this one had a seven-season run while I was far south of the 49th parallel – and it looks like they’re available on youtube.
It may be a while before I get a current episode of “this hour has 22 minutes” – but I can get back to watching Canadian TV.
Trego School went to distance learning last week- and resumed in person classes this week. More or less the same as last time; a shift to distance learning following the Health and Safety Plan (which is considerably longer and less readable than the first version of it that came out over a year ago), with in-person classes resuming at the earliest possible opportunity.
The next regularly scheduled board meeting is on Wednesday, the 8th of December, at 4 PM. But folks interested in attending board meetings should watch the calendar– and for notices placed in the post office.
According to surveys conducted by the US Census, the breakdown in Trego is as follows:
Electricity: Between 18% and 44%
Bottled, tank, or LP gas: Between 1% and 20.4%
All other Fuels (including wood): Between 44% and 68%
Those are estimates- and fairly broad at that, but it looks like about half the people in the community are using wood heat. According to NorthWestern Energy’s Estimates for this month, the cost per thermal unit of firewood in a fireplace $1.97, while a wood stove has a cost of only $1.04 per thermal unit -efficiency has its merits.
Electricity (baseboard) is costing about $3.52 per thermal unit.That’s the highest number on their table of estimates. An Air-Air heat pump still uses electricity, but the cost goes down to $2.27 per thermal unit. An Earth-Air heat pump runs as little as $1.17 per thermal unit. The cost per thermal unit varies a bit for natural gas, depending on the efficiency of the furnace. It could be as much as $1.32 per thermal unit, or as little as $0.94.
This means that for anyone relying on baseboards- there’s a strong incentive to investigate other sources of heat. Firewood is popular here- but the estimates are for dry firewood. Wet firewood is less efficient, and costs more per thermal unit. The reason is that energy that would otherwise go to heat the house is instead wasted in turning the water within the wood into steam.
How do we compare to the rest of the state?
Trego
Lincoln County
Montana
Utility Gas
2.8%
4.1%
51.5%
Bottled, tank, or LP gas
10.8%
10.8%
13.5%
Electricity
30.5%
43.7%
26.2%
Fuel oil, kerosene, etc.
0.0%
4.7%
0.9%
Coal or Coke
0.0%
0.0%
0.1%
All other Fuels
55.8%
35.8%
7.6%
Each number is an Estimate taken from the American Community Survey; It’s survey research, so findings should always be taken with a grain of salt, especially for small populations.
Well, both Trego and Lincoln County as a whole use considerably less utility gas than the rest of the state. This makes sense- populations tend to be concentrated in urban areas, and those are the areas with the most infrastructure for utility gas. We’re considerably ahead of the rest of the state for “All other Fuels”, which is most definitely wood.
Why am I so sure that it’s wood? Because the other fuel source that the Census is admitting to lumping into “All other Fuels” is solar. And, with our day length getting shorter and shorter, it seems highly unlikely anyone’s trying to use solar as a primary heat source in our area.
I’ve started cleaning up and doing a few repairs on the old service station. It’s more a social activity than I had realized. Some stop who knew my parents – there are fewer of those, but frequently strangers to me. Others stop and ask what my business goal is – and I don’t really have an answer. Right now the task is to clean up, add structural walls to reinforce the roof trusses, replace the roofing, and then figure out what to do. Another group stops and asks about the history of these old buildings.
I’ve never felt like a part of history. As I look for answers to these questions, I realize that I was alongside when many of these small local histories were being made. I suppose writing the history of the construction boom will help tell the story.
The history actually applies to four buildings in the SE corner of section 18. The old service station has board and batten siding, and the tanks and pumps have been taken away. It’s not the first building on the corner – Wylie Osler told of a tie hack who stacked his ties on the spot years earlier, overwintered there in the cabin of stacked cross ties, then sold them in the Spring and moved on.
The service station isn’t the oldest building there now. The northernmost building – 8’ wide – is the old bunkhouse that was moved from logging camp to logging camp. The southernmost building – 10’ wide – is its companion cookshack, also moved from camp to camp. I don’t know what sort of a deal Don Boslaugh made with Dad for the two logging camp buildings to change careers from logging camps to trailer court support buildings at Westwood Acres – but now they flank the service station. The heavy timbers that allowed them to be loaded on trucks and moved to logging camps now sit on the ground – and I don’t know the condition now, or what will be done.
Visitors have looked at the log building and commented on its age – but it was actually built in the mid-eighties, and is the newest building on site. It was an instant old building – the log walls were originally cedar poles that supported the telegraph line that ran alongside the rails in the Kootenai valley. They were unmarketable and abandoned by the guy with the salvage contract as the reservoir filled. Milled on three sides by Pat Eustace, they became an instant “old building.” I’ve repaired the back wall in the log building – one of the base logs had shifted and the wall needed reinforcement. The front overhang will be the next repair, then the doors.
The service station was built by Kenny Gwynn – who owned the sawmill in Eureka (now Gwynn Lumber and Reload) and a fuel distribution operation. Kenny leased the building to Howard Mee – with the shop in the north half and the sales floor in the south, and the name Trego Service. The southeast corner housed a barber shop, run by Chet Apeland. It was built in the mid-sixties, set to serve the boom that came with the tunnel and railroad relocation.
The mid-sixties saw four trailer parks built in Trego and a new school was to serve the increased population. I’ve been associated with two of them. I’m guessing that somewhere over 180 trailers moved in to Trego housing workers for the construction projects that accompanied Libby Dam. While we have better equipment available today, I doubt if the construction could be repeated with the need to go through the county planning board and sanitarian’s office. Compared to 1965, today’s county government is . . . well, somewhat distant from libertarian principles.
The service station, after 55 years, will be getting the structural wall back in where the barber shop was, plus structural wall extensions to strengthen the trusses over the old service station, leaving the rooms Dad built in place. After the structural walls are back in, and a new roof is in place, we’ll start some remodeling. Business plans may be nice – but my task is just to get things back in shape.
Trego's Mountain Ear 