By Michael Howell
It’s not too early to get your 2016 Founder’s Day – 175th Anniversary calendar and support the Historic St. Mary’s Mission. It’s includes November and December of 2015 so you can get started anytime now, if you are interested in counting off the days, for instance, to that fateful day 175 years ago on September 24, 1841 when Jesuit Father Pierre Jean DeSmet planted a rough-hewn wooden cross on the east side of the Bitterroot River, leading to the establishment of St. Mary’s Mission, followed by Fort Owen and eventually the Town of Stevensville.
The calendar, published by Dale Burk of Stoneydale Press in Stevensville, features the work of Stevensville artist Ella Buckallew. A fourth generation Bitterrooter, daughter of Eugene Buckallew and Sarilda Kemmel Buckallew, Ella is steeped in the history of the Stevensville/Lone Rock area, and the perfect person to grace the calendar with pictures of historic buildings in the area. After all, she’s got experience at doing it. Her pen and ink drawings were featured in the 1990 Montana Calendar of Historic Bitterroot Buildings produced by the Stevensville Businesswomen’s Club. She also illustrated the 1992 Montana Calendar of Old Schools in the Bitterroot.
In this 2016 calendar, many of the same buildings are depicted as in her 1990 calendar, but this time they are in color, each one an original acrylic rendering. Many are edifices that still exist like the old Moses Baker Place up the Burnt Fork, the Bass Mansion on College Street, the George May House on Park Street, even Chief Victor’s cabin and, of course, St. Mary’s Mission. Others pictured don’t exist anymore, like the “Training School” in Stevensville, that served as the high school, then as the junior high building, before being demolished in 2011, or the Bitter Root Inn, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was built in 1909-1910 at the end of Sunnyside Ridge. It burned to the ground on July 28, 1924 and was never rebuilt.
Many of the days in the calendar contain tidbits of historical information, things that happened in the Bitterroot Valley or in Montana on that day in some past year. Like November 23, the day the railroad reached as far south as Florence in 1887. Or, December 8, the day the Corvallis Post Office was established in 1870. Or December 12, the day the first Territorial Legislature met in Bannack in 1864. On December 15, 1893, the Northwest Tribune proclaimed Stevensville was “lit up by electricity amid much rejoicing, band playing, and whistles blowing.” It was a little over two years later, on December 17, 1895, that electric lights would go on in Hamilton.
Ella will be at the St. Mary’s Mission on First Friday in Stevensville, December 4, from 2 to 4 p.m., doodling small unique acrylics in individual calendars and signing them to help boost sales which go to support the Historic St. Mary’s Mission.