We stand on the shoulders of giants

Walking the Beat

Sorry, no politics today, and I don't think I have the stomach to even open my news feed right now anyway. Instead, I'd like to share a few words that would have approximated my remarks on Tuesday at the courthouse's 125th anniversary and our book-signing for the release of "Anaconda's Foundation Part 2" – if I hadn't been late to the party and had to get going on the signing. I swear, I will be late to my own funeral.

Anyway, building upon the brief thoughts I offered a couple weeks ago announcing Part 2, I would first like to look back at how we got here, or at least how I got here. For me, it started as a cub reporter at the Leader in 2007 getting a phone call from Jerry Hansen, at the time the curator of the Marcus Daly Historical Society museum at Copper Village, who invited me down to learn about the town I was writing about. And wow was there a lot to learn, way more than the couple hours I spent down there. The work that he and Alice Finnegan did to keep much of Anaconda's past from being swept away permanently in the 1970s and '80s truly cannot be understated, though it's not a story I myself can tell. What I can say is that by preserving the photographic record and the company employee records, that alone is a historian's dream come true right there. 

It also paved the way for people who arrived later, like David Webb and Bob Gilluly and their work on establishing a sadly now-defunct Railroad and Mining Museum, and it also spurred the efforts of people like Mary Lynne McKenna, Jim Walund, Mary Murphy and Jim Furshong to go through, organize and digitize what's there in Hansen's archive – efforts that persist today with new helpers preserving those records.

Then there's the boards and organizations – Copper Village of course, plus the Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Historic Resources Board, the Anaconda Community Foundation, the Anaconda Restoration Association, Anaconda Project Facilitators, Discover Anaconda and the TIF board – who all devote a great deal of time and treasure to help keep these efforts going at preserving what we have here. 

And then there are the business owners themselves who have invested in historic downtown Anaconda, and have been doing fabulous work over the years to bring it back to its glory and preserve it for future generations, for which they truly cannot be thanked enough.

And of course there are the writers, those of the past first of all who recorded the doings of yesteryear, and then those today like Ray Haffey and our contributors like Kathy Ilene Lunde, Joel Maes, Patrick Williams, Steve Hill, and more to come in Part 3 like Brenda Wahler. An editor needs good writers, and this one is fortunate to have known so many.

Finally, and there are many more people that need to be thanked than time and space allows, but I am grateful to Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, especially to our MSU Extension Agent/History Detective Kayleen Kidwell, Extension Secretary Paula Arneson and Historic Preservation Officer Gayla Hess for inviting us to be part of the party and coordinating the whole thing, to the 3rd Judicial District for use of the courtroom, and to everyone who took the time out of the middle of a busy day to come out and support our efforts to bring Anaconda's history into the present. Thank you.