Long-lost stage stop history comes alive again

CRAIG – As the Dearborn River flows past his piece of paradise, Rick Goff lives with memories of hunting trips, of building the “finest outhouse on the river” and of his wife, a Polish city slicker he met while serving in occupied Germany – a woman who changed her tune on the pleasures of the outdoors when they bought these seven acres.

Goff also casts his imagination back, way back, 141 years ago to ponder what the Dearborn was like in the Montana Territory days.

If he’d lived then, “I would have made it, easy,” the 86-year-old said. “I think I would have fit in very good.”

Ulysses S. Grant was president then, and the ’76 election went to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who lost the popular vote but won through an electoral college compromise. The United States had 38 states with the addition of Colorado, Wyatt Earp went to work in Dodge City, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, Heinz ketchup debuted and the United States celebrated its centennial.

Montana was young, only a territory for a dozen years by then and still 13 years from statehood.

“The territory was still the last frontier of the contiguous United States,” Goff said. “Just their existence was a challenge.”

Up the river from Goff’s place was Dearborn Crossing, a settlement established at a river ford for stagecoach and freight traffic from the steamboat port of Fort Benton to Helena and the gold camps of southwest Montana.

At its peak, Dearborn Crossing was home to more than 100 people, a saloon, a hotel, a mercantile, a post office and a school. The stagecoach arrived in the town from Birdtail Station, south of Fort Shaw, after a grueling overnight run.

“Nobody slept. It was so rough,” he said. “This was a dry fork of a creek they traveled.”

The people must have been tough pioneers. They were “whiskey drinkers,” he said. “They developed the little community to the point they had a stone bridge to travel all year.”

The Montana Central Railroad bypassed the town in 1887, and it became a ghost town. Before the turn of the century, only a cemetery remained. It’s not far from where Montana State Highway 287 crosses the Dearborn River.

In school, Goff read the stories of Jack London. He eventually realized that like the famous author, he, too, had lived adventures in the outdoors, adventures that could become stories.

“I had all this material in my head,” he said.

He turned that material into his first novel, “The Dearborn Yarn.” It’s the story of an Ohio farmer named Rick Griffin who comes to the Dearborn, where he finds friendship, murder, adventure and romance with a Blackfeet woman.

“These people from different walks of life with different skin colors, through love, solve the problems of everyday life,” Goff said.

He knew from personal experience what trapping was like, how a muskrat tasted (like rabbit) and how it felt to bag one’s first elk, and he incorporated that into the “yarn.” Checking traps on day, he, like his book’s hero, found a dog and pups, freezing after being abandoned. (The incident ends better in the book than it did in real life.)

Specializing in food service through his military career, Goff highlighted food in his book, too. One character’s gravy is “good but not as good as mine – it’s better.”

Even the town’s Crooked Door Saloon came from his own experiences, specifically from a less-than-square door at the Malmstrom chapel.

Goff started his book about a decade ago, but every time he got a stretch of writing in, calamity would strike. He became the primary caregiver for his wife, Elizabeth, in her last years at home. He had surgeries. Finally in 2016, “thank God, nothing happened.”

Goff commissioned artist Jim Borgreen, an old buddy from his Guard days, to illustrate the book. He died in 2015, never seeing the finished project. Or maybe he did and helped get the project to the finish line, Goff mused.

One of Goff’s goals was to get a historical marker erected to commemorate Dearborn Crossing, but the Montana Department of Transportation beat him to it.

People have asked him about a sequel.

“No, no, I won’t live long enough,” he said. “I’m a slow typist.”

Malta man becomes centenarian

MALTA – Happy 100th birthday to Earl Wasson.

He’s seen more good than bad in his 36,512 days, he told the Phillips County News, and for 71 years he’s been lucky enough to be married to Marie, the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.

Wasson was born a century ago in Velva, N.D., (“no poorer place in the world”) and struck out as soon as he graduated high school for Malta, first working at the Ruby Gulch Mine in Zortman for 50 cents an hour, then serving in Europe during World War II and farming near Loring.

“I don’t know how I ever lived to be 100 years old, but I am glad I did,” he told the newspaper.

Levee signs need some love

FORT BENTON – The Fort Benton Community Improvement Association is working on a project to restore historical signs along the river.

Signs are $600 to sponsor, and 33 signs need sponsorship, with several businesses and clubs already signed up to help, the River Press reported.

Signs note the first fire engine house, the “Bloodiest Block in the West,” the railroad and other aspects of local history.

Book: “The Dearborn Yarn”

Author: Rick Goff

Publisher: self via CreateSpace

Pages: 344

Price: $15.95

Website: thedearbornyarn.com

Available at: Cassiopeia Books, online

If you go: Goff expects to sign books at Malmstom Air Force Base March 31-April 1.