The photo was taken north of Seeley Lake on the Swan-Ovando Wagon Road during that era. It shows a burned area in the valley bottom with regrowth started that are probably today's grown trees. The fleeing homesteaders would have been located on what is now private land along Highway 83. Corlett was hardly even a "small town"-comprised only of a hotel/store and horse handling facilities.
Our thanks to Seeley Lake Historical Society member Jean Lafriniere for sharing the following information.
On Aug. 28, 1917 a Seeley Lake related article appeared in the Spokesman-Review newspaper:
• About 100 fires were burning in western Montana, and in some cases, people were fleeing from remote mountain areas.
• "Driving their small herds before the farm wagons and prairie schooners, on which their household goods had been loaded, homesteaders...tramped into Corlett, a small town," near Seeley Lake.
• Most of the refugees "had fled in such haste that they had not even cooking utensils when...
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