From Whitefish Pilot April 05, 2016 at 5:00 am | By Matt Baldwin Whitefish Pilot
There’s a story behind every photograph in Ronald Buentemeier’s rare collection of images from the early days of logging the Flathead Valley. He knows most of the tales from memory, down to the exact date and place on a map.
From his home office above his workshop off Dillon Road, Buentemeier points to one photograph that shows a flume from the 1920s and 30s that was used to send logs to the Empire Lumber Company mill at the current day junction of Truman Creek and Mount Creek.
“That flume was a couple miles long,” he said. “It was all made from lumber.”
One of his photos shows the flume and log deck and has a note that 2 million board feet of lumber are in the deck.
“Can you imagine loading all of that?” he says in awe of the manpower required before machinery.
Buentemeier points to another photo of the original State Lumber Company mill near the Whitefish River on Hodgson Road. Logs were cut from along the river and around Whitefish Lake, then floated downstream to the mill.
“They operated there until 1918 until they moved to the Half Moon site,” he said.
The name changed to F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company in 1933 after claims were made that State Lumber’s locomotive used to haul logs from Haskill Basin had started a 1929 wildfire that torched 100,000 acres in four days. Buentemeier says it’s unlikely the engine started the blaze, but that back in those days companies would often change names to avoid bad publicity.
There’s a story behind every photograph in Ronald Buentemeier’s rare collection of images from the early days of logging the Flathead Valley. He knows most of the tales from memory, down to the exact date and place on a map.
From his home office above his workshop off Dillon Road, Buentemeier points to one photograph that shows a flume from the 1920s and 30s that was used to send logs to the Empire Lumber Company mill at the current day junction of Truman Creek and Mount Creek.
“That flume was a couple miles long,” he said. “It was all made from lumber.”
One of his photos shows the flume and log deck and has a note that 2 million board feet of lumber are in the deck.
“Can you imagine loading all of that?” he says in awe of the manpower required before machinery.
Buentemeier points to another photo of the original State Lumber Company mill near the Whitefish River on Hodgson Road. Logs were cut from along the river and around Whitefish Lake, then floated downstream to the mill.
“They operated there until 1918 until they moved to the Half Moon site,” he said.
The name changed to F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company in 1933 after claims were made that State Lumber’s locomotive used to haul logs from Haskill Basin had started a 1929 wildfire that torched 100,000 acres in four days. Buentemeier says it’s unlikely the engine started the blaze, but that back in those days companies would often change names to avoid bad publicity.