by Dave Shors
Since prehistoric times, the Upper Blackfoot has been one of those mountain valleys where its people and nature, by necessity, live in harmony. The valley is flanked to the north, east and south by imposing mountain ranges with the only access over one of six mountain passes: Dalton, 6,450 feet; Lewis and Clark, 6,421; Cadotte, 6,080; Rogers, 6,376; Flesher, 6,131; and Stemple, 6,376. Today, only foot trails traverse the divide at Cadotte and Lewis and Clark passes; Dalton has a seasonal gravel road; and Stemple has a year-round gravel road. Only Flesher and Rogers have paved or blacktopped roads into the valley. Conifer forests paint the mountainsides a thick, dark green as far as the eye can see, broken only by the lighter splotches of deciduous aspen and cottonwoods along river and stream bottoms. Outcroppings of granite and sedimentary stone burst through the forest tops, nature’s towers scraping at the sky with their jagged tops.
Only to the west is there an escape route for spring and mountain waters, which pour together into the legendary Blackfoot River. The Blackfoot was the favorite fishing haunt of Norman and Paul Maclean and was the setting for Norman’s A River Runs Through It.
“Paul and I fished a good many rivers,” Maclean writes in his popular novella. “But when one of us referred to ‘the big river’ the other knew it was the Big Blackfoot. It isn’t the biggest river we fished, but it is the most powerful and, per pound, so are its fish. It runs straight and hard—on a map or from an airplane it is almost a straight line running due west from its headwaters at Rogers Pass on the Continental Divide to Bonner, Montana, where it empties into the South Fork of the Clark Fork of the Columbia. It runs hard all the way.
“From its headwaters to its mouth it was manufactured by glaciers. The first sixty-five miles of it are smashed against the southern wall of its valley by glaciers that moved in from the north, scarifying the earth; its lower twenty-five miles were made overnight when the great glacial lake covering northwestern Montana and northern Idaho broke its ice dam and spread the remains of Montana and Idaho mountains over hundreds of miles of the plains of eastern Washington. It was the biggest flood in the world for which there is geological evidence; it was so vast a geological event that the mind of man could only conceive of it but could not prove it until photographs could be taken from earth satellites.”
Running parallel, and always negotiating for space with the Blackfoot, modern man traverses the state on U.S. Highway 200. Power and phone lines also share the sometimes narrow mountain corridor. There’s no rail line, unusual for major mountain valleys. But early rail entrepreneurs found little potential here, and James Hill’s Northern Pacific drove the golden spike of its transcontinental railroad some thirty miles southwest of Lincoln, as the crow flies, at Gold Creek in 1883.
Even though it wasn’t a natural for a rail town, Lincoln was a good town site, a high mountain valley at 4,540 feet above sea level, with enough room to grow if settlers were willing to carve a homestead and a lifestyle out of mature stands of lodgepole and ponderosa pine.
Today, U.S. Highway 200 stretches taut as a mason’s string through Lincoln, acting as an adopted-by-necessity main street. Roadside traffic signs warn truckers and travelers anxious to negotiate the eighty-nine miles east to Great Falls or seventy-eight miles west to Missoula that they better slow to 30 mph. The only sign of a traffic signal is a single yellow flashing light, gently swaying in the mountain breezes above the Stemple Pass Road intersection.
If you walk through Lincoln east to west, it’s 1,742 paces from Sucker Creek Road, where a Ponderosa Snow Warriors Club sign welcomes snowmobilers, to Leepers Ponderosa Motel with its small cabins scattered in the pines. Slowing from the east, weary travelers looking for a shaded campsite on a hot summer night find Hooper Park with its softball fields, horseshoe pits, and picnic and camping spots. Hooper also is one of the places people gather to watch Montana’s premier sled dog race, the 300-mile Race to the Sky held each February. Just west of Hooper, and shaded by the same cover of stately pines, is the Lincoln Community Library, a brown lap-sided rectangular building with a green metal roof that often catches rafts of pine needles in its valleys.
Across the street, a yellow sign in front of the Lincoln Public School salutes student activities, especially those of high schoolers. Lincoln people are especially proud of their school, built after a devastating fire destroyed the town’s seven-room elementary school in 1978. Out of the ashes of the disaster came a reward for the community. Before the fire, Lincoln’s group of twenty or so teens was bused daily some forty miles northeast along often slick two-lane highways to attend Augusta High School or even southeast to Helena. The new Lincoln School included high school classrooms.
From the school, Lincoln’s business district stretches west, without any of the congestion of a big city strip, to Garland’s Town & Country Store, a false-fronted mecca for hunters and fishers; Lambkin’s of Lincoln, a popular bar and grill; the Community Hall, where a sign promises bingo every Friday at 7:30 P.M.; The Lost Woodsman Coffee House Cafe and Gallery, with its espresso bar and carved totem pole out front; the chalet-styled United States Post Office; the Three Bears Motel; the Lincoln-log Masonic Lodge; and the Wheel Inn Bar. Also along the way there’s a scattering of bars, restaurants, offices, and a hardware store. Lincoln folks can find almost every staple they need in town, but most do their serious shopping in nearby (by Montana standards) Great Falls, Missoula or Helena.
Lincoln’s population varies. It’s about 1,200 most times of the year, yet in the fall, deer, elk and bear hunters can add significantly to that tally. The same is true in the depth of winter when the Ponderosa Snow Warriors attract visiting snowmobilers to town for weekend poker runs at the Sucker Creek Clubhouse. Snowfall that can exceed two hundred annual inches helps snowmobilers and cross-country skiers forget the frequent, double-digit-below-zero temperatures. Nearby at Rogers Pass, the lowest temperature ever recorded in the continental United States—69.7° below zero Fahrenheit—was posted.
In the surrounding mountain gulches can be found several hundred independent folks who call Lincoln home. They mushroom the registered voting base to 730, but they rarely come to town, unless supplies are needed from Garland’s or the Blackfoot Market, or if they want to check out a book at the library.
While he wasn’t a registered voter, Ted Kaczynski was one of those loosely connected Lincolnites. His independent lifestyle and his dreams of living off the land certainly melded here better than they would in most places in the United States. Lincoln was a place where he actually could follow a nineteenth-century lifestyle. It was a place where people left him alone.
Most were friendly, but respected his need for privacy and kept their distance. Some avoided him as they would a tramp—and he gladly avoided them—occasionally crossing the street so they wouldn’t have to say hello to the bearded, often unkempt and sometimes smelly recluse. He adapted, almost like a crooked Douglas-fir along a high-country stream bottom. A little different, but there’s no reason to cut it down, no reason to damage it, because it never really takes too much water or gets in the way. Then again, you can’t really look under the bark to see what vital juices flow and pulse through the cambium layer.
People ask how Ted could live in Lincoln almost twenty-five years and never be suspected of being one of the most cunning and notorious criminals in this country’s history.
The answer is quite simple: The Upper Blackfoot Valley was a perfect place for Ted to blend into the landscape. Then it became a perfect hideout. He’d probably still be here today plotting his acts of terrorism, constructing and testing his deadly bombs if his brother, David, hadn’t linked notes from a 1971 essay written in Lincoln to sections of the Unabomber Manifesto.
Changes in McClellan Gulch
When Betty and I were married in a simple ceremony on November 19, 1981, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, it put a subtle damper on my membership in Ted’s fraternal order of single mountain men.
I wasn’t aware at the time it would strain our friendship, at
least from his perspective. Who would think the sincere bonding of two human spirits would be threatening to one of their friends?
During the first decade Ted and I knew each other, we had a steady and somewhat predictable relationship.
I dated several different women during the 1970s, but still maintained a single lifestyle much like Ted’s.
We talked and saw each other more before Betty and I were married and she moved into our McClellan Gulch home. In the old days, Ted and I were the only ones hiking, hunting, and exploring in my gulch. Then suddenly here was Betty, petite, but an athletic Lincoln native who also loved outdoor activities, and maybe more importantly, here was her dog, Jigger.
Jigger was a once-intimidating 120-pound male black Labrador retriever who soon became protective of his new home. While we were away working Jigger would lie on the lawn or the porch and guard his domain.
Betty was usually the first one home each day, around 3 P.M., since her work day started at 7 A.M. Jigger would be waiting patiently and then he’d jump up and run out to greet her. He took his watchdog job seriously, and even though he was good natured and loved to chase sticks, he was on guard for intruders and quickly sounded the alarm.
Jigger’s and Ted’s first encounter while Betty and I were away working must have startled them equally, because they immediately established a mutual dislike. Jigger had no way of knowing Ted had permission to be in the gulch, and Ted didn’t realize this was now Jigger’s home. The dog loved everyone except Ted, who provoked an immediate growl and a flash of sharp yellowish teeth. Jigger didn’t pretend to hide his feelings; neither did Ted.
Ted had made it apparent the first time we talked about Betty and her dog that something had changed. The mention of the two mustered little comment. Instead of warm congratulations, there seemed to be resentment toward us and animosity for my new wife, later confirmed in the way Ted treated her.
He continued to catch rides and I’d weld his bike as needed in my Lincoln shop, but it gradually became apparent Ted didn’t want to talk to me or accept a ride when Betty was along.
At first the strange behavior was discounted as just another manifestation of a “Teddism”: If I met him when I was alone he felt comfortable, and if anyone else was around he wouldn’t speak other than to exchange his usual succinct on-the-street greeting.
But Betty never even got a simple “hello,” other than during one unavoidable encounter with her in the gulch when he was forced to act friendly and talk to her. She thought his reticent behavior was curious in the beginning, but when it continued she was offended. She saw Ted often, but he always ignored her, even when they were standing together in the check-out line at the grocery store. Betty said it hurt her feelings that a friend of mine wouldn’t extend the simplest effort to be nice to her.
His reaction was amazing because she was neither an outsider nor a city girl. She was right at home in the mountains, having spent her entire life in Lincoln.
After everything we’ve read since Ted’s arrest about his reaction to his brother David’s marriage, we now can see parallels with our own union. Ted’s reactions seem strikingly similar, except for one important difference: Ted couldn’t cut me off completely as he did his brother. He was forced to maintain a relationship so he wouldn’t jeopardize his unlimited access to the safe haven and home away from home, McClellan Gulch. Whatever anger, disdain, or animosity he felt about my logging, road construction, and mining—or even my marriage—he kept hidden away. He needed to.
His reaction to Betty, though, caught me off guard. Not so much with Betty’s dog, as plenty of people don’t like dogs.
That first summer Betty and I were together, I was welding on a neighbor’s truck in my Lincoln shop when Betty called crying, in great distress. She had driven up into the yard after work and Jigger hadn’t run out to welcome her. She found him lying hurt on the grass, unable to get up.
I quickly locked up and headed for home. Ten minutes later I found Betty in tears, cradling Jigger’s head and comforting her companion of fourteen years. Jigger was crying and groaning, tearing at our souls as only an animal in misery can do.
After a careful examination, I found someone had repeatedly stabbed and gouged the entire area under his tail, shredding his colon, hips, and rectal area. Whoever attacked Jigger may have tried to make the wounds look like he had been in a fight with a bear or coyote, but unmistakably the cuts were made with a very sharp knife or spearlike instrument. There were no other marks or wounds anywhere else on the dog.
Aging and suffering from hip dysplasia, Jigger wasn’t very agile anymore. He must have been stalked, pursued, and stabbed many times while he tried to run feebly back to the safety of his porch.
The poor dog wouldn’t live long enough to make it to the veterinarian’s office in Helena, an hour away, so I went into the house and got my pistol. After we said our good-byes and shed plenty of tears, Betty went into the house and I put Jigger out of his misery. We took him up the gulch and buried him in a beautiful spot near some maple bushes. The household was especially quiet the rest of that evening.
Jigger had been successfully removed from the gulch by someone. But other dogs would take his place and he would not be the last canine of ours to meet a mysterious fate.
Several weeks later we bought a purebred female Alaskan malamute pup to raise, not only to fill the void left by Jigger’s absence, but also to be our watch dog. We named the new arrival Tasha, and she soon felt right at home.
I told Ted about Tasha and the sad mystery of losing Jigger. Ted showed little compassion and didn’t indicate he knew anything about the events.
After Tasha turned two, Betty still missed her Lab, so we adopted two, year-old male Labs from the Lewis and Clark Humane Society in Helena. Soon after, we purchased a purebred golden retriever pup and named him Boomer.
Our stable of dogs was growing, but why not? We both loved animals and they had plenty of room to roam. Tasha had a great time with the new retriever pup, and with Buddy and Lucky, the pound mates.
Not only did the dogs play outside every day, but it soon became impossible for anyone to enter the gulch without their giving ample notice, whether it was us arriving home from work, the UPS truck or the Montana Power Company meter reader driving up to the house, or Ted hiking through. Although Ted traveled a discreet route when entering the gulch, he was unable to enter from the west and walk along the steep hillside above the tailings, his usual path, without the dogs howling.
Four dogs just didn’t seem like enough, so we bred Tasha with another malamute. After we sold all the litter except for a male and female, the McClellan Gulch canine forces reached six. So, by 1986, a dozen alert dog eyes were constantly watching every area of the lower gulch. Sneaking in would prove to be an exercise in futility.
When I explained to Ted the dogs wouldn’t bother him and he was always welcome, he passed it off as no big deal. But it wasn’t hard to imagine his frustration as the pack berated him for fifteen or twenty minutes every time he walked along the mountain trail above our home. We could sense the intense animosity he felt for our dogs, knowing they infringed on his privacy and anonymity.
It seemed like the dogs had a special bark for Ted, and they’d sound it often. Ted’s movement through our area was apparent and became a usual topic of conversation. The dogs would run, barking madly, over to the west side of the stream and follow his scent along the trail.
I’d say to Betty, “Oh, that’s just Ted going on up,” and I’d walk out the door and whistle, calling them back—at least when we were home.
Betty and I didn’t have any problems with our pets again until 1987, when strange incidents increased both in frequency and in evil.
After Betty’s retirement in August 1986, she and all the dogs had fallen into a routine of walking up the gulch together. The daily pattern was fairly predictable. They’d either move up along the bottom and the small streambed for the first mile and then backtrack down on our road along
the east bank, or switch and hike the routes in reverse.
As our Stemple Road neighborhood continued to become more populous—new cabins, more people—the dogs informed us of Ted’s increased presence in our gulch. It was easy to understand why he wanted to avoid the noisy weekend gatherings at the cabins scattered in the small pockets of private land across from our gulch. No longer was he able to hike the area near his cabin without seeing four-wheelers and motorcyclists scooting across every trail and open spot that could be found.
In McClellan, only the dogs were an infringement on Ted’s privacy.
One July day during 1987, when I arrived home from working in the woods Betty disgustedly told me the dogs had crossed the gulch and later returned covered with human excrement, smeared into their coats more deeply than if the animals had merely rolled in a find. She had just given them all a bath, and said there was little doubt it was from a human rather than a wild animal. It’s easy to tell the difference.
Betty thought out-of-town campers were responsible for this mysterious event. That didn’t make sense to me, especially when it happened again and again. Our dogs were irritating someone who had an incredible mean streak, and it was about to get worse.