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Impressions of a Tenderfoot 



Second Paper 



To people "down East" — and Chicago is down East, from 

 the viewpoint of the Inland Empire and the Pacific coast country — 

 the distances encountered in railroad journeys in the great West 

 are appalling. From Chicago to Missoula, Mont., the first principal 

 lumber manufacturing point touched on the journej' to the Xorth- 

 west, is two solid days on a limited express train. 



Again, when a man thinks of a night 's journey from Portland to 

 San Francisco, for example, he is astounded when he finds that by 

 the de luxe Shasta limited the trip consumes twenty-eight hours. 

 Indeed, it is a deuce of a way between things in the great West. 

 To the stranger, Missoula, Mont, (and Missoula is a type of 

 hundreds of other small enterprising cities of the West), is sur- 

 prising in many features. It has none of the wild-and-wooUy-West 

 appearance that the Easterner would naturally expect. Both the 

 business structures and the residences are of a substantial and 

 handsome character. The streets are well paved; electric lights and 

 electric light signs are everywhere in evidence; there are good 

 street car service, splendid school buildings and alluring shop win- 

 dows that are not excelled in any eastern cities of double its size. 

 Tt almost seems that these westerners go to extremes on the electric 

 light proposition, and perhaps it is the very cheapest thing in the 

 whole country because you find electric lights in profusion every- 

 where. 



These Inland Empire hotels are rather surprising to the wayfarer. 

 Most of them are simply lodging hquses, and the guest inquiring 

 for the dining room is told to "go to the left" or "to the right 

 around the corner" where he will find a restaurant. These restaur- 

 ants vary from the "ride-the-pony " variety like Thompson's Spa 

 at Boston to a fair counterfeit of one of Childs' best that you en- 

 counter in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. 



I visited only one of three sawmill operations at Missoula owing 

 to the absence of the principals of the others, and this was one 

 of the three sawmills of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, 

 presided over by Kenneth Ross. Kenneth Boss is a lumberman 

 and one needs spend but a few hours in going through the Bonner 

 sawmill, its yards, planing mills and door, sash and box factory to 

 be convinced of that fact. It's a big operation, mighty well 

 handled. 



While trailing the Northern Pacific I went over to the little town 

 of Ravalli, some eighty or one hundred miles west of Missoula. 

 Ravalli is simply a tank station, but here I encountered a cowboy 

 who was spending his time in negotiating an automobile. It was 

 a six-cylinder Pierce-Arrow — not of the latest type, but it still 

 had four wheels under it and a gasoline tank and an engine, but it 

 was entirely deficient in a hood, and a considerable portion of the 

 upper works were missing. I made a contract with this brigand 

 to take me up through the Flat Head Indian Reservation of Mis- 

 sion Valley, thirty-five miles, to the south end of Flat Head Lake. 

 It was just thirty-five miles, and this cowboy was certainly some 

 chauffeur, because he took me up this valley, uphill and down, 

 over bunch grass and tumbleweed, over about as much semblance 

 to a road as you would find in darkest Africa, in just two hours. 

 It was a nerve-racking tiip, and the reasons I had for not jumping 



from the vehicle and finishing the journey on foot was that there 

 was a boat to catch at the foot of the lake for Somers, Mont.; and 

 again, I recalled the .lewish story of the sinking ship, about which 

 Abe was putting up such an awful hallabaloo, when his friend 

 Ikey observed: 



"Abe, what are you kicking about? It ain't your ship, is it?" 



It wasn't my automobile. 



This Mission Valley, with its quaint Catholic mission houses away 

 up between the mountain ridges, is very picturesque and has, it 

 is said, wonderful eventual agricultural possibilities. The govern- 

 ment is now engaged in gigantic reclamation work involving the 

 building of scores of miles of concrete irrigation ditches, and it is 

 going to be a great country some time. 



From the foot of Flat Head Lake to Somers, Mout., the journey 

 on a little flat-bottomed steamer, is thirty-one miles. I arrived 

 there at night after an all-day's trip from Missoula, and then went 

 up to the general headquarters of all the sawmill men in this dis- 

 trict at Kalispell, twelve miles distant, on a plug road of the 

 Great Northern. 



Here I found another tidy little hotel on the lodging house plan, 

 where you go around the corner to get something to eat. Here 

 I also encountered A. E. Boorman, who is a prince in disguise, but 

 incidentally is secretary of the Montana Larch Association. Here 

 I also "met-up" with a half dozen more of the leading lumber 

 operators of the district.- 



Just a word about Boorman. He takes a stranger to his heart 

 and just quits everything to make life pleasant for him. He knew 

 exactly where I could get pictures of every forest tree that I 

 lacked in my collection, and tramped with me for miles in the 

 forest, and insisted upon toting my fifty pound camera besides. I 

 am going to do my best to secure Boorman a front seat in the 

 alluring place of the Great Beyond. 



Kalispell is the center of Montana larch production. Although 

 this district produces sundry other kinds of wood, the so-called 

 larch is the predominant one. Government reports don't say so, 

 but it is alleged there are twenty billion feet of this wood growing 

 in this section, with Kalispell as the center. 



The word "larch" does not spell anything to the uninitiated, 

 but in reality larch is western tamarack. But dont' let that worry 

 you, because western tamarack is nothing like its eastern namesake. 

 It has a reddish brown bark, is tall but of comparatively small size, 

 and has an average age of perhaps four hundred years. The 

 winter growth is hard, the summer growth a good deal softer. 

 It is relatively a light wood in weight, but has possibilities as a 

 rift-sawed lumber unexcelled by the very finest type of long leaf 

 yellow pine. To my mind it is the softwood flooring that will be 

 £/if flooring of the future, to take over the bulk of the trade that 

 can't be filled from oak and maple. To achieve the best results 

 it should be rift-sawed, because the flat-sawed stock, owing to its 

 proneness of cleavage between the summer and winter growth, does 

 not produce very desirable results as a lumber product. In fact, 

 little attempt is made to produce this lumber in anything above six 



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