PLAINS – Nineteen cars of a 111-car Montana Rail Link train derailed just west of Plains early Wednesday, spilling approximately 37 tons of soybeans into the Clark Fork River. MRL spokeswoman Lynda Frost said the derailment occurred shortly before 5:30 a.m. No one was injured and no hazardous materials were involved. The cause of the […]

HELENA – Less than a week after Gov. Brian Schweitzer was hammered in newspaper editorials around the state for a speech in which he suggested he influenced an election, the governor told voters he was changing his tone. Schweitzer, up for re-election this year, still offers the same greeting on the campaign trail — “Cowboy, […]

Good morning and happy 50th birthday to the Smurfs. On the Beacon this morning, Myers Reece profiles a business that’s booming right now, Costumes Galore and More in Whitefish. A lawsuit between the state and a company that wants to lift decades-old logs from the bottom of Flathead Lake appear to have reached a settlement. […]

It’s no secret that Whitefish has the best Class A golf program in the state. So the boys’ convincing state championship victory in early October served not only as a reminder of how good the Bulldogs are, but also of how good they’re going to be next year. Of Whitefish’s five golfers who competed in […]

Leipzig, Germany 1747. Wolfgang Hoopengarner had graduated from the best dental school in Germany and learned all of the tricks. Bloodletting to reduce the swelling, applications of leeches to combat the fever, knee in the chest to hold down the patients that hollered the loudest, the correct kind of pliers to use to pull which […]

8:50 a.m. A deer that was caught in a fence was rescued. 11:11 a.m. A cat had a bum leg. 11:46 a.m. Someone vandalized a car parked near a wildlife refuge. 12:40 p.m. Someone found a beat up Mercedes Benz on Crane Mountain. 1:13 p.m. The dog responsible for killing chickens on Conrad Drive was […]

A poll conducted by Montana State University-Billings and released Thursday shows that Democrat Barack Obama is now leading Republican John McCain by 4 points in Montana. A day prior, the Associated Press reported that nationwide Obama’s lead on McCain had dwindled to 1-percentage point, well within its poll’s margin of error. Neither can be right. […]

In the earliest days of Kalispell’s history, Christmas was a town event celebrated at the Conrad family mansion. Today, thanks to a group of local volunteers and an annual arts fair, the Conrad Mansion Museum is still a local hub for holiday activity. In the early 1890s, Charles and Alicia Conrad and their children moved […]

The Kootenai River white sturgeon is one of the most intriguing, and some would say bizarre, fish in North America, with a history that extends beyond multiple ice ages. The extinction of the dinosaurs couldn’t take it out, but the 20th century nearly did. Now, following a landmark agreement in September between six groups with […]

In last week’s column, I lightly admonished an anonymous bunch of folks for not personalizing their business (noting that the title of this column is “Business is Personal”). After that, it seems logical that I give you some tools to make it easier to do what I was complaining about last week. There are two […]

BUTTE – A proposed plan for Bureau of Land Management lands around Butte calls for more than 250 miles of road to be shut off to motorized use. The BLM’s Butte resource management plan would close more than 40 percent of the roads on the agency’s 327,000 acres in the Butte district. Butte BLM District […]

Good Wednesday. On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced that American spy planes had discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. It was Kennedy’s first public speech on the Cuban Missile Crisis. On the Beacon this morning, a landmark agreement helps outline the future for the Kootenai River white sturgeon, which have been […]

I’ve written extensively about what I call Montana’s Wilderness drought, 26 years and counting without Congress designating one acre of the Big Sky State as Wilderness. Now, Congress seems poised to pass a massive public lands bill, S.3213, a collection of 90 wilderness and watershed protection bills covering almost every state. For Montana wilderness advocates, […]

A federal bankruptcy court has set an Oct. 31 deadline for homeowners with Zonolite insulation to file an asbestos cleanup claim against W.R. Grace & Co. Zonolite attic insulation is a loose-fill vermiculite product that can contain naturally occurring asbestos. Much of the Zonolite manufactured in the United States came from the vermiculite mine at […]

HELENA – Add college endowments to the list of investments taking a hit as the stock market tumbled. Carroll College, Montana State University and the University of Montana all report multimillion-dollar losses to their endowments. Through June 30, the close of the last fiscal year, Carroll College’s endowment was down 5.7 percent or $2.1 million. […]