Do you remember....Montana history (Missoula, Bozeman: theatre, high school, cost)

[AndersonRM]

Originally Posted by rickers

On August 17 1959 a 7.3 earthquake caused a landslide that blocked the Madison river creating Quake Lake. This quake also caused an overspill of Hebgen dam and caused cracks in the dam. 28 people died as a result of this earthquake.

I remember that too. I was about 9 years old and mom and us kid had gone to the drive-in to see "The Ten Commandments". That's something I'll never forget.

[rangerider]

Can't remember which year exactly, but I was in town for the "Livingston riot"; must have been around the mid-80s or so. Was in the park for the '88 fires, and sure miss Manny's cafe in Bozeman. Bozeman's Starlite drive-in quit showing movies sometime in the 80s, went there a few times, it was on the north end of town by the interstate.

One of the weirdest things I remember happened a few years before I got out here, but people around the Livingston area were still talking about it in the late seventies. It was the murder of Michael Schlosser that happened in 1970 down by (I think) Gardiner. In trying to recall the details about it, I did a search and actually found a writeup about the incident: The Wacky World Of Murder: Stanley Dean Baker (http://wackymurder.com/baker.htm - broken link)

Reads like an episode of the X-Files, but it did happen. Not far behind it was the kidnapping of Kari Swenson by Dan and Don Nichols. And as long as I'm stuck on a 'news of the weird' vein, let's not forget the first moving footage shot of UFOs on August 15, 1950 by Nicolas Mariana in Great Falls. He was the manager for the baseball team, and his footage is still regarded as unexplained.

If you believe in that kind of stuff, that is...

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by rangerider

Can't remember which year exactly, but I was in town for the "Livingston riot"; must have been around the mid-80s or so. Was in the park for the '88 fires, and sure miss Manny's cafe in Bozeman. Bozeman's Starlite drive-in quit showing movies sometime in the 80s, went there a few times, it was on the north end of town by the interstate.

"Livingston riot"??

Originally Posted by rangerider

And as long as I'm stuck on a 'news of the weird' vein, let's not forget the first moving footage shot of UFOs on August 15, 1950 by Nicolas Mariana in Great Falls. He was the manager for the baseball team, and his footage is still regarded as unexplained.

Great Falls footage - TinWiki.org
ufo - UFOS at close sight: The Great Falls, Montana UFO Color Film August 15, 1950
ufo - UFOS at close sight: The Great Falls, Montana UFO Color Film August 15, 1950, frames from the film

The Air Force seems to believe in UFOs... think it was late 1966 when a stationary light was noticed over Gore Hill, and Malmstrom scrambled jets to investigate, so there must have been *something* on radar (of course this was also during the height of the Cold War, so *anything* reportedly encroaching into North American airspace was taken seriously). As I vaguely recall, it split the scene before they could close on it. We went out to look too (along with half of Great Falls), and took pictures, but all you could see was a bright light at medium altitude, possibly showing a disc (similar to Jupiter seen thru binoculars), but nothing definitive. Couldn't find any documentation on this "sighting" offhand.

But I can attest that AF jets and stationary lights don't look much alike. And having lived directly in a flight path most of my life... aircraft can be ID'd with the naked eye at an extreme range of about 8 miles for light craft, 30 miles for passenger jets.

Whilst living in MT, I saw "hmm, that's odd" lights in the sky with some regularity. I've never seen any such thing in California. I can only conclude that the odd lights over Montana fly in from California.

[rangerider]

Originally Posted by Reziac

"Livingston riot"??

Yeah, that's what it was called. I will do my best to relate what happened, but remember I was in my youth and in pursuit of a little lovin' that night and not paying the best of attention....

It was summertime in Livingston and a fairly warm night after a hot day, so the bars were both full of people and getting more so as the evening wore on. Sometime after it was pretty much dark people started spilling out of all the joints and just hanging out on the sidewalks and streetsides, but were still going back to the bars to get drinks and beers (drinking them outside, of course). Well, even in those laxer days, that was a no-no and a couple of town cops showed up and tried to get everyone back inside. They were pretty much told to go to h*** even after some pretty stern warnings were given. They went and got reinforcements from the sheriff's dept. and I think even a couple of state cops to try and quell the rhubarb before it got out of hand - up until that point I don't recall anything much happening, just a pile of people standing outside drinking and carrying on. Jimmy Buffett had his song lyrics right about a Livingston Saturday night.

Anyway, I was in the Stockman bar when somebody came running in and said that there were cops all over and more showing up on Main street. I and this girl went outside just in time to see a sheriff's car receive the first deluge of beer bottles and other assorted debris. We took off around the corner up by Martin's cafe only to meet another deputy sheriff so we ran like rabbits behind the cafe and over on the north side of the old depot building. From there we saw not a lot, but I heard later that they arrested quite a few people for drunk and disorderly, open containers, minor assault and the like. Guess the story was that people kind of adopted a mob mentality over being ordered back into those hot bars and launched an alcohol laced meteor shower on the cops.

If you would search hard enough, I'm sure you could turn up a few "I Survived The Livingston Riot" T-shirts around Park and Gallatin counties. I remember seeing them, but as I was far from involved didn't think it was worth it. As I said, I think it was sometime around the early to mid 80s and was far from a riot, more like a social uprising. As someone said later, if they would have just kind of let the party boil down over a little time, everyone would have just kind of drifted off and gone home.

[jarsmom]

This isnt something that was really newswrothy, but I remember it well.
it was about 79 or so, It was the middle of a summer night in good ol
Kalispell, My mom was asleep, I was trying to sleep but my 2 brothers and
one of their friends were up and being pains in the butt. Finally around 0200 one of them burst into my room and proclaimed we were being invaded by outerspace, "get out of my room creep, I'm trying to sleep" I replied. " No really there is beams of light shooting down from the spaceships. " He insisted. "No really, get the hell out of my room and
quit making so much noise or youll wake mom up". Please he wailed, so
I got up and looked out a window, and hugt shafts of pale green light were oscillating all over the place. "You dummies" Those are the northern
lights. At that point we all spilled outside. The entire northern half of
the night sky was bathed in the same pale green light. Huge blobs blinking on and off, the classic curtians shifting here and there and hugh beams of light shooting up or down. what a sight it was, Ive never seen any thing like it again.

[jimj]

Jars, seen those lights myself about 3 years ago (haven't seen 'em since) and I thought I was having a '70s flashback!
Took me about 5 minutes to figure out what I was seeing and unfortunately didn't understand how rare it is so I didn't wake the family to see them.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by jimj

Jars, seen those lights myself about 3 years ago (haven't seen 'em since) and I thought I was having a '70s flashback!
Took me about 5 minutes to figure out what I was seeing and unfortunately didn't understand how rare it is so I didn't wake the family to see them.

Seems to be rare now, to be visible in the lower 48. Was real common around 1960, in fact we thought it was a regular winter feature when I lived in Bismarck (late 1950s). Speak to the sun, I think it has something to say about when we get such natural fireworks.

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by Reziac

Seems to be rare now, to be visible in the lower 48. Was real common around 1960, in fact we thought it was a regular winter feature when I lived in Bismarck (late 1950s). Speak to the sun, I think it has something to say about when we get such natural fireworks.

A couple of short years ago, I drove for the Railroad. Hauling Railroaders. About 4 times a week I had to run from Sheridan up to Forseith. I would see the northern lights just about every trip. But it was funny. I would see the lights from I-90 between Lodgegrass and Hardin and then again from Hardin over to Custer on 47. But once I turned on 94 and headed East, I couldn't see them.

[rangerider]

I ran with a harvest crew from northern Texas to northern Montana for several years, and one year we were about 50 miles south of Chinook cutting in late summer. That is really back in the boonies, but a nice spot out there in the Bear Paws. One night we had northern lights such as I've never seen before or since; they were utterly unbelievable in their scope and intensity. At one point they covered the whole sky in a cone shaped display with a black hole full of stars directly overhead. Greens, reds, shimmering and dancing. Lasted all night long, and I swear you could have darn near read a newspaper by their light. I pulled a load of grain out of the field towards Chinook at about 11 or midnight and got into town about dawn (tough roads out there). They finally faded when the sun was about to rise.

I've seen the aurora lots of times since, but never anything even close to that; and we've had some pretty intense ones here and there. That display was quite a few years in my past, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. The most unusual thing I remember is that occasionally it would appear as if there were balls of red light moving within the green sheets of the aurora.

I swear I saw all this on pure air - no additives to modify the imagination. And I've got witnesses...

[mtdave2]

I remember the St Helens ash very well. I was out side playing (in Missoula) and I saw what looked like massive snow storm clouds coming in over blue mountain. Was really a strange thing when it hit the Missoula valley, it was very quite with ash falling just like snow. I was glad to get out of school for a few days, but I was in for a surprise when we had to make them up at the end of the year. I still have a jar of that ash someplace…..hum

1994 the summer that never was really depressed me, I lived for summer, warmth, and sun. not to get any of it really sucked! I did try to go camping in the bitterroot mountains that year, it just was soooo wet! At least everything was green!

The 1996 snow storm was awesome! I loved it. just bought a new(er) Toyota 4x4 truck, boy was that thing good in the snow. I had a blast acting like a 25 year old guy with a truck in snow! Lol

Anyone remember the “mansion” burning down on Ben Hogan drive? I grew up playing around that old white mansion, selling golf balls I had found to golfers. There were many rumors among us kids that it was haunted. Must have been in the mid 90s when it burned down. Some thought it was arson.