Finding history in the closet

Every couple of weeks I duck into the storage closet in the conference room at the Daily Inter Lake and watch history come alive.

The Inter Lake each day publishes a short snippet of news from 100 years ago on the bottom left-hand corner of page A2, and for the past few months it’s been my duty to pore over the microfilm from a century ago and find interesting tidbits to share with our readers. It involves sitting in the dark, in the roughly 4-by-8-foot closet, with only the light of the microfilm machine illuminating the tiny space. There’s a lot of eye strain involved.

I’m a bit of a history junkie, though, so it’s been fascinating to see what was making headlines in 1920 when America was on the cusp of the “Roaring Twenties,” a decade defined by economic growth and prosperity, driven largely by the recovery from the devastation of World War I and deferred spending. We tend to think of the 1920s as a time of opulence like the lifestyle depicted in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

But in 1920, when that raucous, flamboyant decade was just getting started, it wasn’t all fun and games in the Flathead Valley.

On Jan. 20, 1920, health officials were fumigating Creston School because of a scarlet fever outbreak, and a quarantine was being contemplated if more cases broke out. By Jan. 28 that year influenza was running rampant, and with memories of the devastating 1918 flu epidemic still fresh in their minds, local doctors were suggesting a “flu” hospital should be opened, “as many of the patients are in hotels and rooming houses where it is difficult to care for them, and there is danger of communicating the disease to others.”

As we struggle with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, I can’t help but think the “history repeats itself” saying certainly holds true.

The Feb. 6, 1920, edition of the Inter Lake noted that Inter Lake carrier boys in the city were quarantined with influenza, and substitutes were called in to deliver papers. The publisher admitted delivery mistakes would be made and pleaded with subscribers for patience.

Then there was Prohibition, which started on Jan. 17, 1920. The Inter Lake followed that saga, noting that by March 10 in Butte — just a week before St. Patrick’s Day — the largest single stock of liquor ever seized in Silver Bow County was destroyed this morning when county officials poured whiskey valued at $20,000 into the sewer.

In February 1920 Bozeman city officials were trying to put an end to the provocative “shimmy” dance that was popular at dance halls and pool rooms. The mayor was urging an ordinance to bar the shimmy dance altogether.

The women’s suffrage movement was in the works 100 years ago, too, with the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote ratified on Aug. 18, 1920. I imagine there will be more about that later this year in the Inter Lake archives.

As I flip through the microfilmed pages of those old Inter Lake editions, I’m struck by how important our newspaper archives are in telling the Flathead Valley’s story since Day 1. The Inter Lake has been telling that story since 1889.

On June 12, I’ll celebrate my 25th anniversary with the Daily Inter Lake. And I can tell you that except for the infamous day of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this past week of disseminating all of the urgent news related to the coronavirus pandemic and how it is affecting the Flathead in myriad ways has been the most all-consuming, stressful time of my 41-year career as a journalist. I am wildly proud of our news team, and we will, to the best of our abilities, continue to bring you up-to-date information about this health crisis.

A hundred years from now, when historians look back at the Inter Lake archives from 2020, I hope they’ll see we went the distance to tell one of the biggest stories of our time.

News Editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.