Old Missoula

Hughes Gardens Sold – 1964

 

Buildings Will Rise Where Vegetables Grow

By Bill Beasley

Sale of the historic Hughes Gardens in Hell Gate Canyon, once a favorite Indian ambush site, has been revealed by Ben Hughes and buyers.

John Stevens and Joe Stevens announced purchase of 33.11 acres for development as commercial property for a syndicate of 10 Missoula businessmen. Previously, four members of the group purchased 6.2 acres close to Missoula.

J. M. Greene, of Rancho Realty, one of the group and broker for the sale, also announced that he will be given an option on 7.16 acres, now headquarters for the truck garden operation, which Hughes plans to farm about two more years.

Vegetable farming on the entire acreage will be continued this year by Hughes, who since 1911 operated the gardens with his older brother, Harry Hughes. He died Oct. 19, 1963, of a heart attack while working.

No purchase price was disclosed, but it was indicated that by the time everything is completed the transaction will be “in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars.”

Greene said “we have no definite plans yet. We may lease or sell. Eventually, we may build a modern, complete trailer park along the river. We have considered apartments or multi-unit dwellings along the river. But mostly we expect development of commercial buildings. It is a natural for a motel.”

The acreage is strung along approximately 8,000 feet of Highway 10, which is scheduled to be an approach road to the East Missoula interchange for Interstate 90. It is south of the present highway and along the Clark Fork River.

Gardening has been conducted continually on much of the tract since the early 1870s, and it is watered from the Fredline Ditch built in 1871 to bring water from Rattlesnake Creek.

William G. and Mary E. Edwards sold the property to Hugh O’Neil March 6, 1873, 16 years before a patent was granted. Andrew B. Hammond of the old Missoula Mercantile Co. got title in 1883. He was a member, with Edward L. Bonner, Marcus Daly and others in the Blackfoot Mining & Milling Co., which reportedly considered the site for the plant later built at Bonner.

Work actually was started on a dam for an electric power plant on acreage which the Hughes brothers obtained from Montana Power Co. in 1926.

Their uncle, John W. Hughes operated the gardens for many years until he died in 1911 after eating poison hemlock root which he thought was an artichoke planted by his partner, Burl Hyde.

The gardens produced tomatoes and vegetables for mines at Bearmouth and Garnet in the 1880s, and the Hughes brothers shipped vegetables to the Garnet store and to Philipsburg in huge quantities.

Both were born in the old First National Bank building razed in 1962, and were sons of an early Missoula attorney, William Hughes. Both started weeding for their uncle about 1906 for $1 a day.

Ben Hughes remembers picking up a cigar box full of arrowheads while weeding, but not what happened to them. He remembers many tales of how the Blackfoot Indians ambushed Shoshones, Flatheads and other tribes headed through the Lolo and Blackfoot Valley areas to buffalo country.

“I don’t know how Hell Gate got its name, but as a kid I was told the Indians hated to go through and called it hell,” the 69-year-old Hughes said.

He also remembers the 1908 flood when the only bridge left on Rattlesnake Creek was by the old pavilion in Greenough Park, and recalls some fine Chinese neighbors in the truck gardening business. John Lung peddled produce from gardens with a horse wagon and gave children candy and nuts on the Chinese New Year, Hughes remembers.

Hughes will still have land, east of the viaduct, to get his hands into after parting with the last seven acres to the west. He termed labor costs and California competition major factors in making truck farming here more difficult.

The gardens have provided employment for nearly six months to a dozen or more Texas Mexicans and women who help with packing. Labor has cost more than $45,000 a year. “Cost is up and efficiency is down, but you can’t pick strawberries or lettuce with a machine,” Hughes said.

The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on May 10, 1964.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349239544/

 

In December of 1979 the Missoula Planning Board approved the Ben Hughes Addition with a 96 single-family subdivision, on “just about” 43 acres, south of the East Missoula interchange on Interstate 90 – according to a Missoulian article on Dec. 6, 1979.

 

Byron L. “Ben” Hughes died in Missoula on December 9, 1982. He married Else Heicksen in 1930. She was a University of Montana graduate and worked with Ben throughout her life. She died in Missoula in 2003.

 

Missoulian reporter Evelyn King wrote a great article about Ben Hughes that appeared in The Missoulian on March 10, 1974. See the link below:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349965906/?terms=%22ben%2Bhughes