Old Missoula

How first booze came to the state

R. F. Welliver, Pioneer, Is Writer of Interesting Tale of Old Days.

R. F. Welliver, father of Mrs. Maude Their, of 646 University avenue, is a pioneer in Montana, having lived in the Treasure state for 30 years. In connection with the passing of the sale of intoxicants in this state, Mr. Welliver has written, especially for The Missoulian, an account of how the first barrel of whiskey was brought into this commonwealth. Mr. Welliver is now more than 80 years of age, but time has not injured his ability to tell stories of fascinating interest regarding life here in the good old days. His account follows:

By R. F. Welliver.

Now that John Barleycorn has been banished from Montana, the late Sam Word’s account of how the first barrel of whiskey was brought overland to Montana should be of interest. Mr. Word, then a young man from Kentucky, had hung out his shingle as a lawyer at St. Joe, Missouri.[1]

Along with hundreds of others he was attacked by gold fever, as the result of the fabulous reports reaching Missouri from the famous Alder Gulch at Virginia City. After purchasing three yokes of oxen and a wagon, Sam had about $400 left for supplies for the trip. He took this money to Russell and Majors,[2] the great pioneer outfitters and freighters, instructing them to buy the necessary provisions for the trip.

After the first day’s drive from St. Joe, Sam took an inventory of the contents of his wagon, and discovered a barrel of whiskey in the outfit. Unable to comprehend what use he would have for the booze, he telegraphed Mr. Majors from the last station, asking him what use he could make of it while crossing the plains.

Mr. Majors wired him: “You will probably need it before you get through.”

Guard Against Indians.

A young man coming to Montana volunteered to drive the oxen for his passage. They traveled in a large train of wagons for protection against the Indians. About 40 miles back of Powder river, feeling safe from the redskins, Sam cut loose from the slow-moving train, and pulled ahead to make the balance of the journey in better time.

Coming down the steep banks of the Powder river, they broke the front axle miles from any tree. They were helpless. They turned the oxen out to graze, expecting to finish their journey on foot, and to abandon their outfit.

Looking down the river, they discovered the camp of three companies of California mounted volunteers in command of a captain who had been chasing the Indians. The captain with an orderly rode up to the broken wagon, saying:

“Stranger, you are in a bad fix.”

“Yes,” said Sam, “we will have to leave our outfit and travel on foot.”

After a short talk, Sam asked the captain if he would not like a drink of whiskey.

“My God, man,” said the captain, “have you got whiskey”

“The Boys” Go to it.

The boys bored a gimlet hole in the barrel and with a reed quenched their thirst. The captain used the reed, saying; “That’s the best liquor I ever drank.”

The orderly followed suit, and then the captain sent the orderly to camp with instructions to detach ten men with a pole and take the wagon to camp, telling Sam that the sutler had an old wagon that he might trade.

“Look out for him,” warned the captain, “or he will beat you. But don’t tell him you have any whiskey.”

The sutler asked $120 to make the trade. Sam had no money, and the sutler did not want any of his canned stuff or grub, having an abundant supply. Sam told the captain he could not make the trade, for lack of funds.

The captain said his boys had just been paid three months wages and he would give them a spree.

“Tell the sutler you will give him the difference in whiskey,” said the captain to Sam.

Charges $40 a Gallon.

“What shall I ask him for the whiskey?” asked Sam.

“Forty dollars a gallon,” said the captain.

Three gallons of the liquid were measured out and the sutler put three gallons of water in for each one of the “red eye.” The captain said the liquor was spoiled by the water and not a drop should the sutler sell.

“I will disarm two companies and keep one for a guard,” said the captain to Sam, “and you put your man up on the wagon and sell to the boys.”

Sam had a half pint tin cup. The captain told him the boys had been paid in $2 bills, and to charge them $2 a cup full.

Before sunset, Sam said, he had the biggest pile of money he had ever seen. The soldiers, becoming hilarious, began throwing stones and fighting among themselves. So Sam told his man to hitch up the cattle as soon as darkness fell. But in their hurry they forgot to tie the bell.

Captain Overhears Them.

The captain, who had been hugging a small demijohn of the famous beverage, heard the bell, and rushing out he stopped them.

“You can’t leave yet,” he declared, “one company of my men have not had a drop!”

Sam told the captain to furnish a bucket and he would leave enough to satisfy their thirst. This was done and then Sam and his outfit left reaching Virginia City with a half barrel of the whiskey, which he readily sold a saloon man for $45 a gallon.

Major’s pioneer barrel of whiskey more than paid Sam Word’s entire expenses for his trip to Alder Gulch.

 

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on January 2, 1919.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/348672422/

 

The Case of the Missing Booze baffles Montanans by John Stromnes

It’s been a dry four years for Montana booze-hunting history buffs.

The case of Canadian Club that Tim Fenton buried somewhere in Montana on the route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is still at large, unopened, untasted and as tantalizing as ever.

In June, 1980, New York ad man Fenton came to western Montana to hide a special case of whiskey. Strict security precautions were followed. He traveled alone, dug the hole himself, and confided in no one. The case was even assembled with wooden pegs instead of nails, to foil searchers with metal detectors.

It was part of the “Hide-a-Case” ad campaign by his agency for Hiram Walker Inc., the firm that markets Canadian Club whiskey.

From 1965 through the early 1980s, Fenton and others from his ad agency hid 22 cases of Canadian Club in places as remote as the Yukon, East Africa and an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile. Western Montana was only one stop among many.

To date, 16 of the cases have been found, most recently one that was placed in an airtight container and thrown overboard into the River Ness in Ireland, hard by the Loch of the same name.

It must be the luck of the Scottish. That case was found this summer by villagers who lived along the river. All the whiskey was gone. Apparently, the Loch’s famous monster found that case, opened it and devoured the whiskey raw, without mix or a chaser.

The case Fenton buried in Montana is still among the missing, despite the best efforts of Montana whiskey sleuths and scholars. And Fenton assures me it was full when he buried it. It is virtually certain, because of certain information inside it, that he would know about it if it had been found, Fenton said.

Why hasn’t the case of Montana whiskey been solved? After all, Fenton gave us clues, and told an acquaintance “it’s in a very obvious spot.” And Montanans have been searching diligently ever since.

Are we just dumb, or did Fenton mislead us, purposely or inadvertently, with his clues?

The first ads appeared in 1981, and I wrote a story for this newspaper about the ad campaign, titled “Lewis and Clark and The Buried Case of Whiskey Mystery.”

Here are the clues to the whiskey’s whereabouts. They first appeared in the Canadian Club ads, and were reprinted in my story.

“We retraced Lewis & Clark’s historic expedition up the Missouri River into Montana. And where they found their roughest going, we hid a case of the smoothest whiskey, Canadian Club.

“Where Lewis and Clark had floated the unspoiled river, Canadian Club’s rafts followed. We tested our nerves, as explorers had, on the wild rapids of the Clark’s Fork. As we explored those historic streams, we buried our case of Canadian Club overlooking the site of one of the expedition’s most important sightings. One clue: Neither Lewis nor Clark made it.”

End of clue. Beginning of controversy.

Nobody knows how many people have spent how many hours searching and researching the journals written by Lewis and Clark, or how many days of summer vacation these same people have wasted scouring the route the explorers traveled through Montana, looking for a “sighting” the explorers never “made.”

But one thing is certain. Scholars agree that Lewis and Clark never “tested their nerves on the wild rapids of the Clark’s Fork.” They came down the Bitterroot on their way west, and headed up Lolo Creek and over Lolo Pass, never reaching the Clark Fork at Missoula. On their return, Clark returned via the Big Hole to the Missouri. Lewis crossed the Clark Fork near Missoula on his return, but hardly “tested his nerves” on the rapids.

“The clue probably isn’t correct, or it’s so tricky that it’s almost unintelligible,” state Historical Society librarian Dave Walters told me in 1981 when I did the original story. “So there’s a catch somewhere. Or they (the clues) are wrong.”

Fenton himself admits he might have been carried away with “color” when he described Lewis and Clark testing their nerve on the Clark Fork. The color photo accompanying the ad copy was taken in the Alberton Gorge, west of Missoula. That is on the Clark Fork, and floating the gorge is certainly a test of nerve. Maybe that’s how he went wrong.

“I’m no scholar,” Fenton said last week after I called him for an update on the search for the whiskey.

But he still stands by what he says is the crucial clue: “. . . We buried our case of Canadian Club overlooking the site of one of the expedition’s most important sightings. One clue: neither Lewis or Clark made it.”

And he added another comment, sure to fuel the fires of whiskey-searching mystery buffs everywhere.

“I used the DeVoto edition (of the Lewis and Clark Journals) in doing my research and I took a very literal approach to it,” he said.

So that is the status of Lewis and Clark and the Buried Case of Whiskey Mystery as of Monday, Oct. 14, 1985.

I don’t know why I should care. I drink Old Grand Dad chased with Burgie.

Maybe it’s because I really enjoy an unsolved mystery laced with good whiskey – and bad history.

 

The above article appeared in The Missoulian on October 14, 1985.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/351058056/?terms=whiskey%2Bhistory

 

Sleuths solve whiskey case; prize missing

Intrepid detectives and history buffs of western Montana, take notice.

You can put away your pocket lenses, your shovels, your fingerprint kits and your Bernard DeVoto editions of The Journals of Lewis and Clark. And your whiskey glasses.

I am saddened to report that “Lewis and Clark and The Buried Case of Whiskey Mystery” has been solved – without a drop of booze accruing to those who solved it.

The mystery involved a special case of Canadian Club whiskey buried by New York ad man Tim Fenton in the summer of 1981 somewhere in Montana along the Lewis and Clark Trail. It was the 22^nd in a series of buried cases of whiskey in the long-running CC ad campaign.

The challenge of finding the whiskey, based on Fenton’s clues published in 30 national magazines in May of 1982, has intrigued hundreds of Montanans over the years. I wrote a story on “Lewis and Clark and the Buried Case of Whiskey Mystery” that fall. So I have researched it a little myself.

First, let me credit the intrepid Polson detectives who solved the case. Haakon Ekland and Chris Balstad. To prove their claim, the lid to the whiskey case is in their possession. After several expeditions, Ekland and Balstad found it this July 4 buried five feet under the soil on Beaverhead Rock near Dillon. The whiskey was long gone.

The following reconstruction of events is based on their investigations and my research. It has been confirmed in all significant details in interviews with Fenton, and with a rural Twin Bridges ranch wife whose land Fenton crossed to bury the case of booze five summers ago.

Fenton arrived in Missoula one day in June of 1981. He rented a car, bought a pick and shovel and left on Interstate 90 with the tools and special case of whiskey in the trunk. The wooden case was joined by pegs, not nails or screws, to foil detectives with metal detectors, and wrapped securely in heavy plastic to protect it from ground rot.

Fenton took I-90 toward Butte and I-15 to Dillon, and thence went north on Montana 41 about 16 miles to the Orrie Nyhart Ranch below Beaverhead Rock. The landmark is known locally as Pointer’s Rock. There is some dispute whether it is the real Beaverhead Rock, as the Montana Highway Department marker asserts. But that is a different mystery.

Fenton talked briefly with Orrie and Mae Nyhart, gained permission to cross their land to do some “historical research” and borrowed their pickup. The Nyharts saw him put the tools and the case of whiskey, disguised by the plastic wrapping, in the truck. Mae Nyhart says, “I suspicioned it was something he was going to bury,” although she didn’t know what.

He drove off toward the Pointer’s Rock landmark and disappeared up a nearby draw.

Near the top he dug a hole “about as deep as one man can dig a hole in one day,” Fenton says. He buried the whiskey, covered his traces, and returned the truck to the Nyharts, leaving the tools with them. He also gave them a substantial cash “gift” – perhaps $500 – to say nothing about his visit.

He then returned to Missoula, the whiskey securely buried, as the ad would say, “overlooking the very site of one of the expedition’s most important sightings. One clue: Neither Lewis nor Clark made it.”

Beaverhead Rock, of course, was the great landmark that helped Sacajawea find her homeland. The sighting was important because the expedition could get supplies from the friendly Indians and continue its journey west.

Ekland, Balstad and I believe the whiskey was found and drunk shortly after it was buried, and that Fenton was never notified. Perhaps a chance remark of the Nyharts led some of their ranch hands to retrace Fenton’s steps that very summer, although the Nyharts deny mentioning it to anyone at the time.

The Nyharts themselves are cleared.

“Neither of us drink so we didn’t take much interest in it,” said the 82-year-old ranch wife, and I believe her.

In any event, after numerous trips to the Beaverhead, Ekland and Balstad finally were successful in finding – something.

Five feet down they found the plywood lid. On it was scrawled the following message, carefully protected by duct tape.

“Nov. 8, 1981 No Whiskey Here Wendy Lowell Ribish.”

So one mystery has been replaced by another. Who is Wendy Lowell Ribish[3], and how did she know where to dig six months before the clues for the whiskey search were first revealed in print? This mystery, I am saddened to report, is still unsolved.

But maybe not for long. Intrepid detectives Ekland and Balstad could take the case.

 

The above article appeared in The Missoulian on July 21, 1986.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/351061223/?terms=whiskey%2Bmystery