Bonner/Milltown History

Our Bonner School teachers have compiled a great Bonner history book, A Grass Roots Tribute: The Story Of Bonner, Montana. It is available at the Bonner School Library. Please enjoy a few passages with us here.

Early Lumber Activity -- Bonner Mill (Jean Ratigan):

On August 19, 1881, The Missoulian reported that General Anderson, chief engineer for the Northern Pacific Railroad, while on his visit to the Missoula area, awarded a lumber contract to Eddy, Hamond and Company. The Company was E.L. Bonner.

Bonner Remembered -- Georgina Fenwick (Gladys Peterson):

... She was a musician who had come west in answer to an advertisement for a wife. Highly romantic saga to a child of twelve! ... It was a free and happy life for children - skating in the winter on the river, climbing the mountains back of Bonner in the summer, picking wild flowers, choke Berries and elder Berries, picnicing in fields by the rushing streams born of the snow pack. I am glad I lived for a while in Bonner. The radiance of that freedom remains with me.

Milltown (Mildred Dufresne):

For almost ninty years the point of land on the east side of the Blackfoot River where the stream flows into the Clark Fork of the Columbia has been home for many hard-working Americans. Here grew the village of Riverside which is now called Milltown.