Locator: 44809B.
NDIC has approved new name for Squaw Gap oil field. Now Homesteaders Gap oil field. The Bismarck Tribune today, behind a paywall.
A point of interest:
A local independent telephone exchange was inaugurated on December 15, 1971, with an NBC broadcast of a first phone call from Squaw Gap to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in Washington D.C
The community was one of the last to obtain landline telephone service in the continental United States. (Iowa Hill, California lost its service in the 1960s, but regained it in 2010.)
I just looked on Google Maps and it is already designated "Homesteader Gap" there. My grandparents homesteaded in this area in the early 1900's and we still have the mineral rights to the homestead, altho they are divided by several generations. I telll my siblings that if our grandparents had gone another 25 miles north and east we would be in "high cotton" now. Also I grew up in northwestern Montana (Libby) and I can remember articles in the 60's about the Yaak area being one of the last to receive electricity and telephone service in the country. Yaak is the extreme northwest portion of Montana bordered by British Columbia and the Idaho Panhandle.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed how fast Google Maps / Wikipedia can make these changes. My hunch is that the US Pony Express and / or the stagecoach is yet to arrive in Williston with the new maps. LOL.
DeleteSeriously, thank you I had not heard of Yaak before. Wow, I just looked at the map -- Yaak really is in the far, far northwest corner of the state!
The only commercial establishment in Yaak is a "world famous" bar known as The Dirty Shame Saloon. There are various accounts of how the watering hole acquired its rather catchy name, but most people never forget it. It was started in the 1950's when there was an Air Force radar station up on a mountain nearby and also the lumberjacks from the sawmill in Libby were out in the woods too.
ReplyDeleteI aim for one trip between Portland, OR, and Flathead Lake, Montana, every summer. One of these summers I may have to take a side trip to Yaak. It would be a dirty shame not to see that scenery. Sorry. Just had to say it that way.
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