Montana

Montana Viewpoint: A rube arrives in Trout Creek

Published

2 years ago

January 30, 2024

Jim Elliott

I had been eyeballing a piece of property in Trout Creek for about a year. It was cheap enough, I had the money, why not? So, I bought it.

It was what around here people generously call a stump farm—stripped of timber, and in this particular case, filled with two-foot-deep ruts from logging equipment. A strip of land that could only generously be called a road led a half-mile to the property from the county road. When the seller’s son heard his mother was putting it up for sale, he and a friend hustled over to take the timber.

They logged in the Spring, they were in that much of a hurry, hence the ruts. The access road was more of a canal because they had used a D-8 Cat to pull the loaded log trucks to the gravel road that led to the mill, and whatever ground had been in the original road was up where the borrow pit would usually be.

There were two buildings on the place, a chicken coop which I did not hesitate to burn down, and the roofless Fox cabin on the back part of the place. There had been a well-built squared cedar log house, but I was twenty years too late for that because it had burned down.

Barney, the logger-son met me on the place and handed me a beer. Not a bad beginning, I thought, as I looked out on acres and acres of stumps, ruts, and scraggly trees.

“The thing this place is best suited for is timber,” Barney said. It was good advice, I now know, but I didn’t take it. I wanted to farm so I hired a woman with D-8 Cat and she stumped twenty -five acres for me. Acres with which I soon had an intimate and arduous relationship, picking sticks and moving burn piles around.

I had farm equipment left to me by my father, so I went back to the farm in Pennsylvania which I had left in 1960 and made arrangements to load it on a railcar and ship it to Montana. It took a month to load it. My most vivid memory of that time is the Farmall H (that I learned to drive on) dying in the middle of the busiest intersection in the town I was shipping it from. It was something I learned to take in stride.

So, the equipment loaded, I set out to beat it to Trout Creek, which shouldn’t have been very hard, but a blown tranny in my 1962 Chevy half-ton allowed me to experience a week in Dekalb, Illinois. But I did beat the railroad to Trout Creek.

A friend of mine and I were sitting in the old Trout Creek Café waiting for the local to arrive. I had had to find a place to off-load the equipment and the L-P mill had allowed me the use of their spur track and loading dock. “There’s your stuff!” my friend Roy shouted when the local came into sight, so we beat it over to the mill to watch them spot the railcar.

Honestly, I should have been embarrassed to ship it, there was so much junk in it, but there was good stuff, too: four tractors, a baler, a swather, a combine, two wagons with high sides crammed full of stuff, plows, discs—all the paraphernalia beginning farmer could want.

As we were looking at the railcar and the work ahead of unloading it, two men approached, one of moderate size and build named Dude and the other a more or less mountain-sized man named (of course) Shorty, although he often went by the name of Copenhagen. They were brothers.

“How you gonna get that off?” asked Shorty. It had taken four weeks to load it, so I figured on at least a week to unload it with the help of a couple of friends, but my basic answer was, I didn’t know. Shorty did. If we waited to the weekend, Shorty said, the mill would gladly loan them the equipment to unload it. I don’t know if the mill ever knew about it, but they must have, because on Saturday morning, bright and early, Dude and Shorty used the mill’s 966 log loader to pick my equipment off the flatcar and place it on the ground. It took two hours.

I also learned that what might have been junk back east was welcomed in Montana. Looking at the wagons, Shorty said, admiringly, “High speed wheels!” meaning that the axles were fitted with roller bearings, not babbit.

I was beginning to feel at home.

Montana Viewpoint has appeared in weekly and online newspapers across Montana for over 25 years. Jim Elliott served sixteen years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.

Source link

Click to comment

Montana

Evacuation orders issued as 5,000-acre wildfire burns near Roundup, Montana

Published

3 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Evacuation orders issued as 5,000-acre wildfire burns near Roundup, Montana

ROUNDUP, Mont. —
The Rehder Creek Fire is burning 16 miles southeast of Roundup has grown to about 5,000 acres, prompting evacuation orders for residents in the Bruner Mountain Area/Subdivision.

The fire started Feb. 26, the cause is unknown and containment was at 0%.

Evacuation orders are in effect for all residents in the Bruner Mountain Area/Subdivision. The Musselshell County Sheriff’s Office is coordinating the evacuation orders, and 911 reverse calls have been sent out to advise people in the area.

A shelter is opening at the Roundup Community Center. Residents were told to contact Musselshell County DES for further information.

Firefighter and public safety remain the top priority. The public is asked to avoid the Fattig Creek and Rehder Road area so emergency personnel can safely and effectively perform their work.

Fire resources assigned to the incident include 40 total personnel, 11 engines, one Type 2 helicopter, three tenders and two dozers.

Source link

Montana

February 26 recap: Missoula and Western Montana news you may have missed today

Published

15 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

February 26 recap: Missoula and Western Montana news you may have missed today

State

Zip Code

Country

Source link

Montana

Escobar, Jayapal, Members of Congress Call on Camp East Montana to be Shut Down – Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Escobar, Jayapal, Members of Congress Call on Camp East Montana to be Shut Down – Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) – joined by Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Ranking Member of the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee, and 22 other Members of Congress – sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons calling for the immediate closure of Camp East Montana in El Paso. They cite urgent humanitarian concerns following multiple deaths in custody, documented unsafe conditions, and serious deficiencies in medical care.

This marks the fourth letter Congresswoman Escobar has sent to DHS and ICE leadership. The previous three letters have gone unanswered.

The letter can be found in its entirety below and here.

“Secretary Noem and Acting Director Lyons:

We are urgently calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS or the Department) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to shut down Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas.

Camp East Montana has been operational for six months, and at least three people have died at the site since December 2025: Francisco Gaspar-Andres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, and Victor Manuel Diaz. The El Paso County Medical Examiner has officially ruled Lunas Campos’ death a homicide, citing “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.”

Camp East Montana was constructed in a matter of weeks and opened before construction was complete and it does not have enough federal staff on-site to provide adequate oversight. Over the last several months, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, in whose district this facility is located, has sent multiple letters to DHS and ICE regarding concerns about the conditions at Camp East Montana, and has received no responses.

According to detainees, there have been constant and consistent problems at the facility since it opened, beginning with the facility’s poor construction and poor ambient temperature control. Upon opening, the drinking water at Camp East Montana tasted foul and made some detainees sick. Detainees continue to be served inadequate meals, including food that is rotten or frozen; last fall, the facility was also consistently failing to make dietary accommodations for detainees. Detainees have shared that they have sporadic access to outside spaces and recreational areas, and that their dormitory pods are cleaned only once every eight days, despite pods housing up to 72 people at a time. Laundry services are not consistent, and people are washing their clothes in the facility showers. Additionally, the facility experiences flooding and sewage backups when it rains, leading to stagnant water.

One of the biggest concerns with the Camp East Montana facility is the inadequate medical care being provided to detainees. Our offices have heard that only the most ill detainees are referred to the medical unit and that there are inconsistencies as to how soon after arriving detainees are able to undergo initial medical screenings. Detainees with chronic health issues who rely on regimented medications for their health have had difficulty accessing necessary medications, including blood pressure medication and insulin.

At least one of the deaths that occurred in ICE custody, the death of Francisco Gaspar-Andres, appears to partially be the result of poor medical care by staff at the facility. According to ICE’s own account, Gaspar-Andres sought medical attention from facility staff for increasingly serious symptoms, but was only transferred to an area hospital once his condition had severely deteriorated.

In addition to our concerns about poor medical care, we are also aware that detainees have experienced irregular access to their legal counsel, including instances of detainees having only two minutes allotted per phone call every 8 days, which is contrary to ICE’s Detention Standards on access to counsel, and that the belatedly created law library lacks adequate resources for the amount of people currently held at the facility. In January 2026, ICE announced the on-site death of Geraldo Lunas Campos “after experiencing medical distress.” ICE opened an investigation into the death, but did not provide a cause of death. However, The Washington Post later reported that another man detained at Camp East Montana had witnessed guards choking Lunas Campos when he refused to enter a segregated housing unit. Weeks later, the El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled that Lunas Campos had experienced “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression” and ruled his death a homicide.

Lunas Campos is the first detainee to die at Camp East Montana as a result of a use-of-force incident, but we are strongly concerned that he will not be the last if ICE is allowed to continue operating Camp East Montana.

ICE was given $45 billion in taxpayer dollars in the reconciliation bill, $1.2 billion of which were awarded to Acquisition Logistics, LLC, a company with no previous experience managing immigration detention facilities, to build and oversee Camp East Montana. However, in the wake of three deaths in custody so far, continued concerns about conditions at the facility, and ICE’s apparent disinterest in responding to oversight letters from Congress, we do not believe Camp East Montana is being run professionally or responsibly.

Camp East Montana must be shut down. For the safety of everyone at the facility, for an end to abuses to detainees, and for fiscal responsibility to the American people, the site cannot continue to operate. We are calling on DHS and ICE to move to immediately close operations at Camp East Montana.

We look forward to hearing from the Department promptly on this matter.

The other co-signers include Representatives Yassamin Ansari, Nanette Barragán, Yvette Clarke, Lloyd Doggett, Maxwell Frost, Jesús “Chuy” García, Sylvia Garcia, Daniel Goldman, Jimmy Gomez, Henry Johnson, Stephen Lynch, Seth Moulton, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Delia Ramirez, Andrea Salinas, Janice Schakowsky, Darren Soto, Rashida Tlaib, Paul Tonko, Lauren Underwood, Gabe Vasquez, and Nydia Velázquez.

Issues: Immigration

Source link