Our Favorite News Features of 2024
From a profile of an aerial stuntman to the consequences of a struggling timber industry to a Blackfeet member becoming a movie star, here are a few of our best stories from the last year
By Beacon Staff
At the Beacon, whenever we look back at all the stories we covered over the previous year, we’re always surprised by what we’ve forgotten and can rediscover. There are features on mill closures, the rewilding of the Swan Valley, and on the vikings of Blacktail Mountain. Here is some of our best work from 2024.
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Redefining Rural
Amid transformational shifts in Montana’s economy, community colleges are growing local programs for rural and tribal students, rising to meet workforce needs while expanding what it means to pursue higher education
Over six months of reporting from Eureka, Libby and Browning, Flathead Beacon education reporter Denali Sagner completed this five-part series examining how Montana’s rural and tribal colleges are expanding programs for students as they adapt to the state’s changing economy. This project was published with the support of the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship.
Read the five-part series here.
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With Lily Gladstone Day, the Blackfeet Nation Embraces a Star
The event in Browning included the transferral of a stand-up headdress to Lily Gladstone, the history-making actress recently nominated for an Academy Award
Flipping through the pages of a handmade, laminated book with the words “For Lily” on its cover, it becomes possible to imagine what Lily Gladstone means to some of the youngest members of the Blackfeet Nation who were on hand to see her this Tuesday at a community-wide gathering and ceremony in Gladstone’s honor.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Remembering the Tragedy on Peters Ridge
Thirty years after an avalanche killed five people in the northern Swan Range on New Year’s Eve, local rescuers, skiers and snowmobilers reflect on the tragic event and the evolution of search and rescue protocol and avalanche education that followed
Thirty years ago on New Year’s Eve, 38-year-old Steve Burglund arrived at the accident site in the Swan Mountain Range northeast of Bigfork to find uniformed firemen, sheriff’s deputies, search and rescue (SAR) personnel and dozens of first responders and volunteers. Snowmobiles were zooming in and out of the forest two miles away from the nearest road, hauling rescuers and gear, while authorities relayed information to the 911 dispatcher.
Read the rest of the story here.
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The Vikings of Blacktail Mountain
Twin brothers Nick and Andy Bertrand are local builders, carvers and Norse enthusiasts who recently began their lifetime project — bringing an immersive Viking experience to the Flathead Valley
We missed the turn, as is often the case when navigating backroads in Montana. It took two U-turns before Flathead Living photographer Hunter D’Antuono successfully found the wooded property owned by Andy and Nick Bertrand.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Latest Mill Closure Threatens Northwest Montana’s Timber Traditions and its Forest Health
The decision to close Pyramid Mountain Lumber is rooted in a complex set of problems, including the steep costs of living and a depressed demand for lumber
For as many Montana mills as Gordy Sanders has seen shuttered or sold during his 53-year career working in the woods, the loss of another local timber company hasn’t gotten any easier. But following the recent closure at Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Seeley Lake’s largest employer for 75 years, where Sanders has worked for nearly 30, he says this one feels like the end of an era.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Rewilding the Swan Valley
A half-century after the Swan River National Wildlife Refuge was officially designated to preserve this ecologically rich chunk of northwest Montana, local stakeholders have worked to restore its natural state
Gazing across the marsh from the Swan River National Wildlife Refuge, visitors are inclined to be on the lookout for birds or other wildlife that visit or live here. But scattered throughout the refuge are fenceposts and the remains of log buildings, strewn like bones of a long-dead animal. Skinny waterways, like flooded sidewalks, meander amid reed canary grass and cottonwood stands, etching the faint outlines of a story of early settlement on this wild and wonderful landscape.
Read the rest of the story here.
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What Happened to the Montana Democrats?
A once powerful force in state politics, Montana’s Democrats have faced mounting electoral losses in recent decades. As the state’s most popular Democrat faces an uphill battle to reelection in the U.S. Senate, questions about the viability of the party in a post-November landscape loom.
In the thick of August in Montana, political advertisements are as ubiquitous as smoke-shrouded mountains and parched fields of wheat. Over radio waves and on Instagram reels, ads depicting “Shady Sheehy” and “Two-Faced Tester” seem inescapable, as interest groups pour millions into the state in hopes of swaying voters in one of the most competitive U.S. Senate races in the country.
Read the rest of the story here.
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In Whitefish, Justin Barry Has Designs to Stop Waste
Justin Barry believes he can play a role in protecting the environment by repurposing the gear, clothing and equipment that is so regularly cast aside and sent to the trash in this corner of Montana
Wearing a denim shirt made from two pairs of Levi’s jeans and holding a “frankentote” bag stitched together from an old sweatshirt, it’s easy to think that Justin Barry is something of a mad scientist of all things wearable. But hearing more about his philosophy and approach to design, and seeing his creations in action, reveals a logic that is almost relaxing in its straightforwardness.
Read the rest of the story here.
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High Land Prices and Congested Highways Pose Logistical Challenges for Flathead Farmers
Most commodity producers in the Flathead Valley rely on dozens of individual landowners to lease their property for production as the agriculture industry continues to dwindle and open space is lost
As a third-generation producer based out of Creston, Miles Passmore has been farming cereal crops like wheat and barley along with other crops like peas, alfalfa and hay with his father for the past 18 years across the Flathead Valley.
Read the rest of the story here.
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The Ladies of Le Grizz
Last month, Missoula-based runner Evie Tate lowered the women’s record at the 50-mile Le Grizz footrace for the first time in nearly four decades. But even as a new generation of athletes rewrites the record books at one of the oldest ultramarathons in the world, they’re preserving the race’s rich tradition while supporting the nonprofit Glacier Institute.
Ever since Evie Tate won her debut Le Grizz 50-mile Ultramarathon in 2021, the Missoula-based physical therapist and endurance athlete has known she would need to summon a near-perfect performance to lower the women’s overall record, set in 1985 by Roberta “Bobbie” Pomroy. Many old-timers regarded Pomroy’s blazing time of 6 hours, 37 minutes and 53 seconds as bulletproof, enduring as it did for nearly 40 years.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Cold, Dark and Lonesome
In 1960, a Montana-raised airline pilot on reserve duty crashed a Navy fighter jet in the darkest depths of Flathead Lake in a case that remains cloaked in mystery. Investigators initially said the crash was the result of unauthorized pilot error, and while new evidence has restored the Marine’s honor, neither his body nor the plane were ever recovered.
The Grumman F9F-8 was a fast, highly maneuverable fighter jet used in pilot training and by the Navy’s Blue Angels to entertain thousands in the late 1950s. But how one of the jets, flown by a Montana-raised airline pilot on reserve duty, came to rest in the darkest depths of Flathead Lake in 1960 is an enduring mystery.
Read the rest of the story here.
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James Beard Award-Nominated Chef to Take on Executive Role At FVCC’s Culinary Institute
Chef Andy Blanton is replacing Howard Karp, the longtime executive chef at Flathead Valley Community College’s Culinary Institute of Montana
At the beginning of their education, Howard Karp likes to hand his culinary school students at Flathead Valley Community College’s Culinary Institute of Montana what he calls the light bulb scenario. It starts with a little bit of his own biography, beginning with Karp in the 1960s, as a 17-year-old in Pittsburgh, working in the kitchen at the high-profile Duquesne Club. School wasn’t working out, but this was a way to make a living.
Read the rest of the story here.
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A Legacy in Wilderness Packing
After the last founding member of the Back Country Horsemen of the Flathead died this year, the legacy of conservation and packing in the Bob Marshall Wilderness continues as horse packers reflect on the nonprofit’s vision and a new generation takes the reins
More than 50 years ago, four Columbia Falls men and their horses sat underneath the Wall Creek Cliffs at a hunting camp in the Bob Marshall Wilderness after learning their access to the remote region could soon be cut off. The U.S. Forest Service had recently announced a proposal that would require permits for all stock use in the wilderness area fondly known as “the Bob,” and infrastructure like cabins and bridges would be dismantled.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Big Sky Diver
In a groundbreaking career spanning more than 50 years, aerial stuntman B.J. Worth has won world championships, portrayed James Bond on the big screen and organized the Olympic Rings freefall. What’s next for the Whitefish resident who pioneered the art of human flight?
On Aug. 4, 1984, B.J. Worth was lying on the top level of the Eiffel Tower, sound asleep. Around his prone form, production assistants scurried around trying to fix a jammed video camera set to record an action sequence for the James Bond film, “A View to Kill,” starring Roger Moore in the eponymous role as 007.
Read the rest of the story here.
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In Northwest Montana, Private Timber is Betting the Forest on Public Access Protection
Land and wildlife managers, timber companies, hunters, and conservationists have stitched together a checkerboard of vulnerable working forests, using easements to protect private timberland from development. With a critical piece of the puzzle coming up for final land board approval, advocates say a new model of forest management is taking shape.
On a bright October morning west of Marion, from a viewpoint along a forested county road corridor interspersed with commercial real estate signs, Neil Anderson surveyed the north slope of Dredger Ridge, a favorite walk-in elk hunting area for generations of Montanans. Widely known as the most productive public hunting ground for harvesting an elk in the region, the mixed conifer stands flanking Dredger Ridge are central pieces on a checkerboard of private timberland that’s been managed for public access for a quarter-century, despite a succession of ownership.
Read the rest of the story here.
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The Western Taleteller of Whitefish
Although Dorothy M. Johnson’s oeuvre included such famous works as “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “A Man Called Horse,” she spent much of her life enduring financial hardship in her hometown of Whitefish, where she paid her dues and left more behind than she owed
The opening paragraphs of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” describe a sparsely attended 1910 funeral in an unnamed western town, an event seen through the eyes of a newspaper reporter, his interest fueled by talk that the dead man “had been something of a gunfighter in his early days.”
Read the rest of the story here.
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Glacier’s Historian
Ray Djuff has secured his place as one of Glacier National Park’s preeminent historians and recently released a new book about the iconic Red Buses
Every reporter should have a rolodex filled with people who are good for a quote — whether it’s about something happening on the city council or a bit of local history. For more than a decade, when I was covering Glacier National Park as a reporter for the Flathead Beacon, my go-to on the latter was Ray Djuff.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Is Travel and Tourism Spending Trending Up in Glacier’s Gateway Communities?
A new report shows visitors spent $372 million in communities near Glacier National Park in 2023, infusing $554.5 million into the local economy — slightly more than the previous year. But tourism officials and hospitality leaders say that while goods and services may cost more, visitors’ spending habits appear to be trending down.
For businesses catering to tourists visiting gateway communities around Glacier National Park, the floor is high even when the economic ceiling is low. It’s Glacier National Park, after all; the adage that you “can’t eat the scenery” doesn’t really apply here, and the short seasonal window during which tourists can drive the full length of the Going-to-the-Sun Road still functions as a veritable spending spigot.
Read the rest of the story here.
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The Tragedy in Tunnel Creek
Twenty years ago, a small plane carrying a team of U.S. Forest Service employees departed for a backcountry airstrip in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, never to return. Authorities put out word that no one had survived the crash; 48 hours later, two young foresters emerged from the wilderness and hailed down a passing motorist on U.S. Highway 2.
On Sept. 20, 2004, a pilot and four passengers in a single-engine Cessna 206 left Glacier Park International Airport and headed for Schafer Meadows, the site of the only public airstrip in the mountainous, remote 1.5-million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness complex.
Read the rest of the story here.
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The New Frontier of Fiber Hemp
A fiber processing facility in Fort Benton has recently gained enough traction to bring a new crop to the Flathead Valley, diversifying the market and helping boost profit margins for producers
At a 165-acre plot north of Woody’s Country Store near Creston, local grower Tryg Koch has historically planted typical Flathead Valley commodity crops like alfalfa and yellow mustard on the property at the base of the Swan Mountain Range. But Koch and his business partner, Lee Buller, of Heritage Custom Farm, threw a new crop in the plot’s rotation this year, planting industrial hemp that will be sent to a facility in Fort Benton this fall.
Read the rest of the story here.
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As Community Services Collapse, Experts Say the Mentally Ill are Being Left Behind Bars
The closure of mental health crisis centers in the Flathead Valley has created a backlog of criminal cases involving mentally ill defendants, overwhelming the courts and leading to a growing waitlist for evaluations and treatment at the Montana State Hospital. According to experts, incarceration is the default for mentally ill defendants.
When Columbia Falls Police Department officers found Zain Glass on Sept. 20, 2022, he was outside the house he shared with his mother and sister clutching the knife he’d just used to stab his sibling’s 22-year-old boyfriend in the stomach. In interviews with detectives, Glass insisted the stabbing was accidental, and that he overheard the couple arguing. He later told a Flathead County judge that he attacked the man to protect his sister.