20/35 Year Look Back

In celebration of 35 years of the Seeley Swan Pathfinder, each week we will run parts of articles that appeared in the issue 35 years ago and 20 years ago. The entire issue will be uploaded to our website seeleylake.com for you to enjoy. We hope you will enjoy the journey with us as we follow our community through the past 35 years as documented by the Pathfinder.

35 years ago: Oct. 16, 1986 issue - Community Survey

First impressions

Computers began to digest the preliminary data from the Community Attitude Survey on Tuesday. Ken Weaver, consultant from Bozeman, relayed some first impressions about the results.

Water District: Ninety-one percent of people responding to the survey said, YES, they are connected to the community water system. Most are satisfied that the community water system delivers water that is safe for human consumption. Seventy percent said they were satisfied with water pressure at their property. A similar percentage agreed that the community should start planning now for a community sewer system.

Many of the write-in concerns of those surveyed dealt with management of the water district and updating the system.

Other first impressions from Ken Weaver were:

• SOS Health Center: Sixty-one percent of the people responding to the survey said they have used the Center. Many listed a full-time...

To read more visit https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/1986-10-16.pdf

35 years ago: Oct. 16, 1986 issue

Joe Atkinson - A glimpse of history

Story Suzanne Vernon

The leaves drifted from the cottonwood trees and turned the brown grass gold on portions of the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range last week. Joe Atkinson searched the countryside for familiar sites as we drove across Boyd Mountain, through years of memories, past the ghosts of pioneer homesteads.

Joe, who now lives at Greenough near the Blackfoot River, was 16 years old in 1923 when he came to work as a ranch hand on the Boyd Ranch, which was owned by his uncle Bill Boyd. That was the beginning of a lifelong love with this area and he has called the Blackfoot Valley home ever since.

"I've been other places," he said, "but I always came back here."

For more than a dozen years he worked on the Boyd Ranch, herding sheep and tending cows. He remembers times when 6,000 sheep were sheared in a season, when the...

To read more visit https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/1986-10-16.pdf

20 years ago: Oct. 18, 2001 issue

$5,000 Community Foundation grant helps fund cost of Upper Swan Valley Landscape Assessment

Story Swan Ecosystem Center

On Saturday, Oct. 13, from one to four o'clock at the Community Hall, the community of Seeley Lake is invited to attend an Eightieth Birthday Party for longtime resident, Dan Cainan. Cainan was born October 12, 1921, in Aurora, Illinois to Blethyn (B.J.) and Mary Cainan, the second of six children.

At age seven, his family moved to Butte where his father worked in the mines. Shortly after arriving in Montana, his father suffered a mining accident that broke his leg in three places.

The Cainan family moved to Hamilton where his father took up odd jobs working as a janitor, and teaching piano lessons,

Cainan said that growing up "peasants" in Hamilton was difficult and school was not his strong point. He jokes that they "kicked him out of third grade"...

To read more visit https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/2001-10-11.pdf

 

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