by Dave Shors
We took along my dog Jo-Jo, a four-year-old black Lab cross. I set up our tent late Friday afternoon on a flat spot just above a firepit surrounded by a circle of rocks. I had built it several years earlier and used it frequently.
As the early-summer afternoon turned to evening, I gathered wood for our campfire. After cooking a supper of steak, fried potatoes, and camp beans, I stoked the fire and banked it to last well into the evening.
The bed of coals, now deepening, glowed a dark ruby red and flickered in the night air. Nights in the mountains can be quite cool even during the summer. We moved closer to the fire as we talked. Jo-Jo lay nearby with his head resting on his paws.
Suddenly without warning a rifle shell exploded in the coals. First one, then another and another.
At the first loud report I screamed to my sister to lie flat on the ground so she wouldn’t be hit by any shrapnel. I too hit the ground and both of us were protected by the rim of rocks around the firepit. Jo-Jo ran to the tent and hid inside.
When the shells stopped exploding I carefully scattered the coals and doused the remains of the fire. Miraculously neither of us was injured.
It would be many years before I would understand why this incident occurred. The one thing I did know at the time was someone had deliberately placed live ammunition deep within the campfire bed, so that the rounds would explode the next time a hot fire was built.
But why? Was this an early warning to stay out of the upper areas of my gulch?
AUG. 7 (8?) [KACZYNSKI JOURNAL]
…I had tacked up the hide of the first deer I killed on this trip. I found the hide was gone. I don’t know whether a bear or a coyote took it to eat, or whether a human found it. But I don’t know what a human would be doing in such a steep, overgrown place, or what they would want with the hide. The possibility of a human going through there outside hunting season is disturbing. If that place is not secluded enough, what is?…
In summer of 1975, a small trailer sat near an old mine in Fields Gulch, a large area that lies just west of McClellan. Talk around Lincoln was that miners intended to reopen the adit of the Black Widow Mine and begin a new venture from the old workings. They successfully re-opened the portal, entered old drifts that hadn’t caved in and then began to clear the caved-in portions of the tunnels.
The trailer that served as quarters for the men was parked a short distance away. After taking a few days off the men returned to find their portable dwelling completely trashed. Everything inside was broken and scattered about, and many items were missing. No one was ever caught.
Another mine was vandalized the following summer. The Gold Dollar only a quarter mile from my home had been worked off and on over the years, and I knew the men currently operating it and a small placer site nearby. When I stopped by to visit one day, one of the men asked if any of my machines had been tampered with recently. I replied that they were all okay. He said their compressor truck had been vandalized, and that someone had poured a lot of sugar into the tanks, and had done other damage. I promised to keep a sharp eye out from now on, and check their machines when they were away.
Not too long after that, another acquaintance told me that his truck, parked in the woods a couple miles from my house, had been sugared while the owner was away from the site. Later that fall, there was similar news from a few miles to the east, at Rochester Gulch.
Late one afternoon in 1975, I decided to walk along an old trail east of Rochester Gulch to the top of the mountain, circle around and then come out at an old mine on the other side. I had followed this trail plenty of times in the past, either on foot or on my motorcycle. I had seen other motorcycles in the area from time to time, but with the old access over Poorman Creek washed out, I hadn’t ridden the trail since at least 1972.
More motorcycles had been in the area recently; you could hear the high-pitched buzz of their tightly wound engines echoing for miles in the mountain gulches. I was curious how they were getting up to the trail. After spotting what appeared to be a new trail next to the timber that cut from Stemple Road straight up the mountain to the edge of a grassy hill, I decided to check it out.
I crossed Poorman Creek near the old access road and hiked up to find where it seemed the new trail would intersect with the old one. I found the spot and could see there had been a lot of use; the trail was deeply rutted and eroded into the mountain. Once grass is killed by motorcycles going straight up a fifty- to sixty-degree slope, erosion is not far behind. Runoff from rain and snow washes out the straight and steep trail quickly and easily. The old access trail had never had that much traffic—very few people knew about it—and it followed a more contoured route.
Looking up the mountain, I was surprised to see that the new trail not only joined and crossed the old one, but then it cut a new path straight up the ridge. This new breed of mountain motorcyclist obviously wasn’t going to waste any time following switchbacks or contours. Their method was quick and straight toward the top. Now I knew where all the cycles roaring past my house were headed. I decided to follow the new trail to its end.
I had always known that if a few trees were removed, a motorcyclist would be able to ride to the top of the mountain. Once on top he could ride miles across the ridges, east and west. Was this where the new trail would lead?
I climbed about a quarter of a mile to a very steep, almost vertical slope where the trail went through the trees just before it broke out into a large, grassy meadow on the mountainside.
Walking through the trees I pulled up short. A half-pace away was a small but strong wire stretched across the trail at neck height in a most dangerous place. The wire was oxidized, not shiny, and was nearly invisible. Pulled taut, it was firmly wrapped around a tree on each side of the trail in a location where the path narrowed amid numerous trees. The deadly trap was strategically placed where it would be impossible to steer a bike quickly clear, even if the rider saw the wire. The steep section of trail added to the danger. Powering uphill, a rider would build speed to make it to the grassy meadow; going down would be disastrous as well, since it would be almost impossible to stop the quickening pace of a cycle. The wire was capable of lopping a rider’s head cleanly off.
I promptly removed the wire from across the path, twisting it together and wrapping it around one of the trees. Still amazed, I cut my hike short and headed back, shaking my head at yet one more mystery in the woods. What would happen next?
The next strange event unfolded in the spring of 1977 or ‘78 about two miles up McClellan, where there was a small piece of property that was one of the last private holdings in the gulch I hadn’t been able to buy. Since I owned the rest of the land, I kept the gulch blocked off to prevent theft or vandalism to some of the old structures left from the early mining days.
One afternoon, when I returned from town, I saw that my cable across the road had been removed and fresh vehicle tracks led up through the timber. I followed them and found a man who had hauled a small crawler tractor with a dozer to excavate and mine along the streambed.
He said he was working with a Missoula man who had purchased the property, which puzzled me because the owner was from Helena and I had been trying for several years to work out a purchase agreement with him.
I didn’t argue, deciding to let him stay while I found out what was happening.
Soon he erected a small, twelve-foot-square tin-covered cabin, and started to build a road above and beyond a historic section of the gulch. I visited the site one day while he was gone and felt sick about the damage I saw. Trees were pushed over with root balls sticking into the air, and the logs were covered with dirt. No drainage dips were constructed in the road so the runoff was cutting a channel into the road bed causing severe erosion and siltation of the stream. I felt especially bad because I had tried to be friendly and the man had promised he would treat the fragile mountain terrain with due respect. I had even ridden up earlier with him to help unload a small chest freezer to use as a cooler for his food.
I called the Helena man who owned the property. He was furious, and the whole property dispute headed for court.
Several days later the miner arrived, went up the gulch where he had been working, and promptly returned.
He was angry. Someone had trashed his cabin, vandalized his small bulldozer and stolen its magneto so the dozer wouldn’t run. He wanted to know why I would let people go through my locked gate and up the gulch.
I assured him I hadn’t and I was unaware of the vandalism. I went on to say that whoever damaged his cabin and dozer must have hiked in over the ridge from the south.
He reported the incident to the Lincoln deputy sheriff and I promised I would keep a closer watch and would check his things from time to time when he was away. I didn’t want any of my things vandalized either, and hoped the culprit would be caught.
It was a real mystery. But the mining activity and the man’s careless damage to the environment were obviously bothering someone other than me.
The property dispute was settled quickly in court. The original owner, the Helena man I knew, prevailed. Soon after the court decision the miner obtained a replacement magneto, repaired his tractor and hauled it home.
He was gone, but his mess remained. A few years later I was able to buy the piece of property, but the mystery still was unsolved.
After that incident had come more and more acts of vandalism and theft. These weren’t the acts of teen pranksters in the woods for a weekend kegger. For example, an area rancher found one of his cows shot dead, but neither hide nor flesh taken. A few years after that, area electric power went off one late summer day. That in itself isn’t unusual in the Lincoln area, but a few days later I happened to have coffee with a Montana Power Company employee. He mentioned that someone had chopped down a power pole, as if felling a tree, and that caused the outage.
The only common denominator: everything was happening in the Stemple Pass area. The only lull in the activity lasted from summer 1978 into 1979, which at the time I didn’t relate to Ted’s absence from the area.
One late summer afternoon around 1979 the local deputy pulled up into my yard, got out of his pickup, and began to question me about who might have been involved in an incident he was investigating.
Somebody had demolished an almost new and very nice cabin less than a half mile from Ted’s home place.
The deputy, whom I knew well, mentioned a couple of possible suspects. Then he brought up Ted Kaczynski’s name.
“I don’t know who would have done this, but I know it wouldn’t be Ted,” was my immediate response.
At that time I really believed that statement. I hadn’t yet seen the side of Ted that was capable of such a crime.
We discussed other possibilities. Then I asked him, “Why would Ted be considered a suspect anyway?”
The cabin owner said he and his kids had ridden their snowmobiles up around Ted’s cabin and it had made him extremely upset, the deputy replied. I explained the family had done the same thing to me and I was upset at the time. I caught them and told them to leave.
I argued that if I had the same motive and didn’t do it, that fact alone wasn’t enough to pin it on Ted. The deputy agreed.
We then talked about the cabin and the destruction. I was shocked. The person responsible had devastated the cabin and machines parked there and most everything was beyond salvaging. An ax had been used to hack a hole in the cabin to gain access. After entering, he then had chopped up the kitchen cabinets and emptied the contents of the refrigerator and thrown them across the floor. Mustard, glue, bleach, and other substances were squirted and poured all over the carpet, furnishings, and bedding. Even the phones were smashed and phone lines were pulled out of the walls.
Virtually no spot inside the cabin was left unscathed. All this anger was then directed outside where, after growing tired of unscrewing fasteners around the window of the small mobile home used as a camper, he finally smashed the glass to get inside, and ravaged the camper.
The snowmobiles and motorcycles were next. After chopping and slashing the machines, he pounded and broke their engines with an ax. Some things, like a chain saw, just disappeared without a trace.
It was a scene of destruction. Whoever was responsible was a very angry and vengeful person. At the time, I heard the damage was estimated to be from $20,000 to $25,000.
I couldn’t believe it. Who could have committed this terrible act? I had successfully helped get Ted off the hook, and even if there was a question of his guilt or innocence at the time, nothing could be proven. Whoever was responsible would get away with the crime for the time being.
Every area around my home was hit. It seemed as though nobody was safe.
During the late summer of 1980, a family moved onto some property that had just been logged. They set up a camp and had a couple of motorcycles for mountain transportation. The family left for several days. When they returned they found the motorcycles a sorry sight. All the tires were slashed, the bikes were smashed up and sugar had been poured into the gas tanks. The motorcycles were nearly destroyed.
Earlier that same summer a potentially deadly episode occurred in my gulch. I had just moved a 16-by-26-foot cabin to a spot near the trailer where I was living.
I had started a low-scale logging operation, selectively removing some large Douglas-firs that were beginning to die or fall over undercut banks heavily eroded by a recent spring flood. I skidded the logs down to a landing near the Stemple Road where I decked and prepared them for hauling to the Champion International peeler mill west at Bonner, Montana.
I left for the weekend on a welding job near Toston, some ninety miles to the southeast. I had hooked up power to the new cabin since I planned to fix it up and build an addition at some point. I accidentally left a light on when I left, and I never locked the doors since the building was tucked away in brush and trees, and was barely visible from the main road.
When I returned I was alarmed to find a bullet hole through the wall just below a window near the light that had been left on. The bullet had ripped through the wall at an angle about chest high and then hit a protruding corner next to a mirror. If it had pierced the corner it would have shattered the mirror.
I followed the path of the bullet by line of sight and determined this was no accident. The trajectory led to a cluster of trees and brush on the hill behind the cabin far from the road where someone could have discharged a gun.
Ted was the last one I ever would have suspected. Looking back I now realize how easy it would have been for him to think it was a person other than me in the new cabin. I never had explained to anyone what I was doing. Logs piled along the road, a new cabin moved in, the circumstances could be interpreted as signs that some loggers had moved into the gulch and were beginning operations. Ted knew the cabin and tractor I later found out he vandalized a couple of years earlier didn’t belong to me so it would be easy for him to think this situation was similar.
What topped everything else about the shooting was that whoever fired the gun then entered the cabin to see if he’d hit anyone. When he found the building empty he dug the slug out of the wall, removing any possibility of identifying it. Later I explained to Ted about the logging activity and that I was trying to save the timber before it toppled into the stream, and told him about my new cabin. He looked surprised and concerned. Although I said I was finished logging here and never wanted to take more trees out of McClellan Gulch other than ones I was losing, I never mentioned anything to him about the bullet hole in the wall.
After a short lull, a period of relative calm, Lincoln area residents were surprised to learn of a cowardly shooting.
Two men had started a small placer mining operation in a streambed that flowed into a drainage some fifteen miles southeast of where we live on Stemple. After clearing the timber and brush from the site they set up a gold washing plant and equipment used for excavation and moving placer material.
Things went smoothly for a while
. Then one afternoon one of the men was perched atop the washing plant. He bent over to inspect the machine while it was operating.
A shot rang out. The man fell over, hit in the back. Miraculously he survived, but after a long, slow, and painful recovery, he remains partially crippled to this day.
The gun used in the shooting was a 30-30, determined by ballistic tests on the slug that was recovered. Once again, there was plenty of speculation, but nobody was ever charged; the shooter remained at large. Now the stakes were even higher; a man’s life and health entered into the equation.
From the early 1980s on, rumors surfaced from time to time that someone was shooting at aircraft: helicopters, planes, even passenger jets far overhead. Nobody knew where the shots were coming from. At the time I questioned the validity of the reports because I didn’t believe anyone around Lincoln could do such a thing. There was much I hadn’t learned yet.
With the summer of 1981 came another bid for a logging job. During the 1970s and 1980s, logging and road construction contracts on National Forest land were on the upswing. The emphasis on increased timber production directed from the federal officials in Washington, D.C., trickled all the way down to the Lincoln District. It was a period of high productivity, with local foresters’ jobs graded critically by the board foot—the amount of lumber the public forests were yielding.
This dictum ended in 1990, when the Forest Service philosophy swung in favor of multiple use and the recreational value of public land.
During the period of high timber productivity many millions of board feet were logged around Lincoln, and dozens of forest roads built, with one new local road system alone stretching into twenty miles of otherwise inaccessible mountain terrain.
One of the logging jobs contracted during the summer of 1981 was located east of Dalton Mountain Road, less than ten miles by road and five by air from where Ted and I lived. Rubber-tired skidders were being used on the job. There also was new road construction into a mountain area some wanted to remain roadless. The contractor had crawler tractors for building roads, a log loader and other equipment at the site. The job had run smoothly for a year, until the late summer of 1982.