Jan. 2—The year 2024 will go down in history as the year of incessant political campaigns as millions of dollars poured into the state in the race for the U.S. Senate that pitted Republican challenger Tim Sheehy against incumbent Jon Tester.
Sheehy ran on his military background as a former Navy SEAL and a campaign that said Tester had become too liberal for Montana.
Tester, meanwhile, pointed at Sheehy’s business dealings calling him in campaign ads, “Shady Sheehy.”
Voters saw it otherwise, however, and Sheehy won, defeating Tester.
While Republicans ruled the roost in the 2024 election, including former President Donald Trump regaining office, Democrats carved out a little niche in Flathead County, with incumbent Dave Fern winning the Senate District 2 seat, which included the cities of Whitefish and Columbia Falls, and Debo Powers winning the House District 3 race, which include the North Fork and northern Whitefish in a new district.
In city news, longtime City Manager Susan Nicosia announced her retirement after a distinguished career in public service. Her last day was June 30, but she still contracts with the city for some financial services as a replacement has yet to be found.
In addition, Columbia Falls Police Chief Clint Peters retired and for a few weeks acted as city manager. He applied for the job permanently, but council did not hire him, even though he did a good job in the weeks he was manager.
The city named a new planning commission to keep in line with the Montana Land Use Planning Act, which expunged the city’s planning “doughnut.” The commission is charged with mapping a course for future planning in the city, with a housing study due out late this winter.
The city did approve, in principle, a plan to convert baseball fields to affordable housing in a project with Habitat for Humanity. The actual planning for the project will come in 2025.
It was the end of an era in Columbia Falls as owner Mick Ruis closed down the Columbia Bar on Nucleus Avenue. Ruis said the bar was costing him about $10,000 a month. Meanwhile, by the end of December, Ruis had put his own restaurant and bar Monaco, which is also on Nucleus Avenue, on the market. It, too, is shuttered. Monaco had opened in 2023. Another notable bar closing that made the rounds on social media was Packer’s Roost in Coram. The biker bar had been a mainstay for decades as well.
Ruis and his wife, Wendy, donated the old junior high school to the Columbia Falls Kids Foundation which, in turn, leased the space to several entities including the Boys and Girls Club. After some renovations, the old school has become a vibrant hub for Columbia Falls youths.
Ruis a bought the building and surrounding grounds from the Columbia Falls School District in 2021 for $550,000. He fixed the roof and the heating system and also did significant upgrades to the building, which also houses his Ruis Wrestling Academy, another organization dedicated to Columbia Falls youth.
Voters passed a levy for a new roof over the high school’s classroom wing, but then heavy rains swamped the wing as the roof was being replaced this summer, as the holes were not tarped over (the roof also caught on fire during construction as well, though didn’t sustain much damage). The floods from the rains meant the classrooms had to be rebuilt. Fortunately insurance covered most of the cost, but students had to be temporarily housed at Canyon Elementary and Glacier Gateway Schools until the repairs could be made.
Most classes were back in the wing by early November.
Tragically, Columbia Falls native Josiah Kilman was allegedly strangled to death by fellow student Charles E. Escalera on the campus of Campbellsville University in Kentucky. Both young men attended the school. Kilman was a freshman wrestler and Escalera had wrestled for the Christian school as well. A motive has yet to be released, however.
Church Women United donated some $639,000 to local causes in 2024, which were the proceeds from the sale of the Klothes Kloset building in December, 2023. The building is now a daycare.
Don Lawrence, died in March. He was 94. He was the founder of the Don Lawrence Orchestra and the Columbians, the high school jazz band. He was also a gifted and talented Columbia Falls musician and composer.
Sadly, Emily Rea of West Glacier went missing on the Hungry Horse Reservoir July 16. Her paddleboard was found, but despite an exhaustive search, her body has not been found. Foul play is not suspected in her case, Flathead County Sheriff Brian Heino said.
A Coalition for a Clean CFAC, a new group that was taking a critical eye toward the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co.’s Superfund Cleanup plan, said it endorsed a plan that creates a brand new landfill at the plant site to store waste. The cost estimate to remove the waste and haul it to an approved landfill in Oregon was estimated to be $624 million to $1.4 billion. The company, in turn, endorsed a plan to contain leaking landfills at the site behind a slurry wall of bentonite that would be designed to stop dumps from leaking any further. They’ve been leaking cyande and fluoride into groundwater at the plant since at least the 1990s. But so far, the poisons don’t reach the Flathead River at detectable levels, according to studies.
A Record of Decision, which will outline the final plan for cleanup, has yet to be released by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Meanwhile, developer Mick Ruis announced plans to buy most of the 2,000-plus acres of land from CFAC and turn it into a community of homes and parks. But the sale is contingent on the release of Record of Decision approving the slurry wall plan, which in the greater scheme of things, won’t take as long to complete.
In other toxic waste news, Leslie and Luke Sterling were told by the Environmental Protection Agency that their lawn had deadly dioxin in it. The dioxin came from a long defunct Beaver Wood Products plant that sold treated posts and poles. The site had supposedly been cleaned up years prior, but dioxin and other harmful chemicals were still found in tests at the Columbia Heights area of the plant, which was about 20 acres total.
In Glacier Park area news, businessman Will Hammerquist finished Kyiyo Mercantile at Kiowa Junction near Two Medicine. The store looked a lot like the Polebridge Mercantile, which Hammerquist also owns.
Glacier National Park had one of its busiest summers on record. Despite record heat in July, the rest of the country was also baking, so Glacier’s 90s were better than the 100s in other places (though we did reach 100 one day). Also, September and October saw all-time record visitation for those months, as the weather was unusually pleasant.
Glacier announced in the fall it would try a timed entry system for the west side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road in 2025 as well as the North Fork in an attempt to further level off visitation surges. It will also pilot a shuttle system into Many Glacier due to construction in the Swiftcurrent Valley.
Two environmental groups sued the Park
