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: Dec. 31, 1986 issue

The Boyd Ranch - Revisited

Wandering through memories is a bit like strolling through a meadow, searching the tall grass for pheasants, walking the creek banks and drinking in the pungent swamp grass smells. Though the terrain is familiar, you're never quite sure what you'll find.

I recently spent an afternoon with Joe Atkinson, Greenough, and his cousin, Bill Boyd, Jr., Missoula. Both men grew up in the Blackfoot Valley. Joe is 80 and Bill is 79 years old. We "strolled" through some Blackfoot memories, digging up treasures from their youth spent together on the "Boyd Ranch," a sprawling cattle and sheep operation created by Bill Boyd, Sr. during the early 1900's.

The Boyd Ranch ran nearly 5,000 sheep, hundreds of cattle, and dozens of horses (including registered workhorses that each weighted nearly a ton). During the summer, perhaps fifty men worked to put up hay and repair fences on the ranch. Several hired hands worked on the ranch year round, according to Joe Atkinson, who spent 10 years living and working on his uncle's ranch.

The elder Bill Boyd came to Montana in the late 1800s. He was a logger, "a river-driver," and worked in the woods near Butte and Philipsburg before he moved to Ovando. He met his future wife Minnie Atkinson at an Ovando community dance. Together they worked to build their 12,000-acre ranch (which, along with thousands of acres of adjoining leases, later became the Blackfoot Clearwater Game Range).

During the ranching years of their marriage (about the turn of the century), Minnie raised their family and worked on the ranch while Bill Sr. kept busy logging for the Anaconda Company near Woodworth, Placid Lake and in the Blackfoot Valley. Slowly they were able to build up their herd of cattle. Bill Sr. was also an experienced butcher and operated a slaughterhouse which supplied beef to the ACM logging camps.

Theirs was a self-sufficient life-style. "Mother hauled water from the creek for seven years," Bill Jr. explained, adding that they finally acquired a light plant in 1918, which provided some electricity.

"We all worked like hell, seven days a week. I remember breakfast at ten after six until that place was sold," Bill Jr. said.

Winter ranch chores included cutting 100-pound blocks of ice from Salmon and other nearby lakes and hauling them by sled to the ranch's icehouse to pack their precious cargo in sawdust for summer.

Securing firewood was another monumental job. It took from 90-100 logs, cut, split and stacked to see the ranch through the winter.

Why so much wood? By the middle 1920's, there were no less than two dozen buildings, several of which had to be heated, at the main ranch site: the family house, two bunkhouses, the blacksmith shop, the slaughterhouse, several barns, the stud barn and many sheep sheds.

Along with other chores, each spring 200 or more bum lambs had to be cared for....

To read the full article and more articles from the Dec. 31, 1986 issue visit https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/1986-12-31.pdf

20 years ago: Jan. 3, 2002 issue

Seeley Elementary students told a story of "Simple Gifts" in Music & Dance at Christmas Concert - Photo Essay

To read the full Jan. 3, 2002 issue visit https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/2002-01-03.pdf