Missoula’s 1st Bathtub by W. B. Harlan
First Bathtub in Missoula
Dear Oracle: You ask if any one knows who brought the first bathtub into Missoula. Personally I do not, but an old-timer friend, Major Andrew Swaney, who lived in Missoula those days, thinks the honor belongs to J. P. (‘Jimmie”) Reinhard, who imported one via Corrinne in the prehistoric days of the early seventies.
I presume the evolution of the bathtub in Missoula was somewhat similar to that in my own family: First, the time-honored plunge into a quart of water in a tin basin behind the kitchen stove, with doors locked and windows screened; next, a long wooden box, home-made, the water coming from an open barrel kept filled by pail or pump and heated by pipes from the firebox of the stove. This was followed by the “boughten” tub of zinc or tin and that by the enameled tub of today.
The evolution of the tub brought with it a change of date for the bath from Saturday night to any old night or morning. “The world do move.”
W. B. Harlan
The above comment appeared in French Ferguson’s “The Oracle” column of The Daily Missoulian on January 5, 1926
If you Google Mr. Harlan you will see that he had a long and storied career in Western Montana, first coming to the state in 1866. If they haven’t already, somebody will probably write a book about him.
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