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RONAN — A memorial service for Phillip Rolla McVey, a smokejumper who died fighting a wildfire in 1949, was held at the Ronan Cemetery last Saturday. Similar graveside events were held across the country last week on the 75th anniversary of the Mann Gulch Fire that claimed the lives of 13 smokejumpers. Organized by The National Smokejumper Association, events included a brief history of the Mann Gulch tragedy, a review of the smokejumper’s life and recognition of their sacrifice with the addition of an NSA memorial medallion to their grave marker. On Aug. 5, 1949, 15 smokejumpers parachuted onto a hilltop above the Mann Gulch forest fire east of Helena...
BOZEMAN – An instrument designed and built at Montana State University to capture the first high-resolution, far-ultraviolet spectrum of the entire sun was launched into space aboard a NASA rocket on Sunday, Aug. 11. The launch, scheduled for 1:05 p.m. Mountain time from the White Sands Missile Rang...
BOZEMAN — Many Montana State University students arrive in Bozeman — at its roughly 5,000 feet above sea level — and only climb from there, ascending southwest Montana’s many peaks. But a team from MSU’s College of Letters and Science descended nearly 17,000 feet below MSU&rsquo...
The Polson City Commission meets every first and third Mondays (Wednesday, if the Monday falls on a holiday) of the month at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 106 1st Street East. Meetings are open to the public. St. Ignatius City Council meets the second Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. at Cit...
News from FVCC KALISPELL — Get ready for an evening filled with timeless music as American folk legend Don McLean brings “A Night of Hits & Stories” to the Wachholz College Center on the Campus of Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell on Sept.4, 2024. At 7:30 p.m. This hig...
A group of Montana law students and young activists launched an organization last week to help facilitate freedom-of-information requests and to educate both the public and policymakers on the state Constitution’s right to know. The founders of the Montana Transparency Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit...
News from Bryan Moser, Rapid City South Dakota News PIERRE SOUTH DAKOTA — Teammates Ron Couture of Ronan and Monty Marengo of Polson brought back five gold medals from the 2023 South Dakota Senior Olympics’ played on Sept. 7 in Pierre, South Dakota. Couture won the singles (ages 54-58 age...
Story from the Aug. 30, 1912 issue of the Ronan Pioneer History of Ronan will date hereafter from August 24, 1912, the date of the big fire. On that day at between 2:30 and 2:45 p.m., the exact minute being in dispute, a fire was discovered in the automobile garage of Crawford & Clairmont, in the al...
KALISPELL — Advocates for the homeless are calling for compassion in Flathead County after a homeless man was murdered in Kalispell early Sunday morning. The killing comes as the community struggles to deal with a growing homeless population that has become the subject of strong rhetoric from ...
FLATHEAD RESERVATION — “The American Buffalo,” Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary, took four years to produce, but the idea behind it can be traced back more than 30 years. Burns recently found an earlier version of a proposal for a film about bison in his files. It had been written i...