I had been working at the Daily Inter Lake for about five years in 1989 when the Inter Lake celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Actually, celebrated is probably something of an exaggeration. In fact, I’m pretty sure no one even noticed, which is kind of a shame — because 100 years of serving the community, covering softball and quilting, county commissioners and county spelling bees, horrid crimes and fatal fires, successes and failures, grand openings and going-out-of-business sales, people being born and dying, love and laughter and the occasional tragedy — well, it’s worth at least a mention.

I went back through the bound volume of newspapers from August 1989 though and didn’t see any mention of it; nor do I recollect any kind of a special section or even a story to commemorate our history and the important role of the Inter Lake in the history of Flathead County back then.

So when I realized that we were nigh upon the 125th anniversary of the Inter Lake’s founding in 1889, it occurred to me that I could help set the record straight by recounting at least a small part of the role this newspaper has played in the Flathead since before Montana was even a state.

When Clayton “C.O.” Ingalls founded the Inter Lake as a weekly journal on Aug. 23, 1889, Montana’s statehood was still three months away and Kalispell didn’t even exist yet. The first edition of the paper, and the next two years’ worth of the successive editions, were published in the boom town of Demersville on the Flathead River a few miles north of Flathead Lake.

Ingalls named his publication the Inter Lake for its geographic location between Flathead and McDonald lakes. Emma Ingalls, who played an active role in publishing the paper alongside her husband, recounted in 1924 at a meeting of the Century Club in Kalispell that the paper was named by the editor with the help of Demersville stalwarts George Stannard and John Clifford.

An Oct. 5, 1912, brief confirms the gist of that story. Clifford, then a resident of Anaconda, was back in town visiting “friends of the old Demersville days” and apparently stopped by the Inter Lake. The editor noted of the early days that, “Incidentally Mr. Clifford interested himself in assisting the late C.O. Ingalls in getting the Inter Lake started as the first newspaper in the Flathead country, and when they were fixing on a name for the paper, he says he christened it.”

It is perhaps not irrelevant that the early Inter Lake also included advertising for the popular weekly national newspaper called the Inter Ocean. It is reasonable to conclude that the local editor was hoping to piggyback on the success of that publication with his otherwise quite unique name.

Clifford, by the way, was the first and only mayor of Demersville. He was also U.S. marshall and postmaster during the town’s three years in existence. In 1887, he married Delima Demers, the daughter of entrepreneur T.J. Demers, the namesake of the new town.

By all accounts, the Daily Inter Lake was the first paper to be published in Northwest Montana. During the newspaper’s 50th anniversary in 1939, the editor told a charming story about the hardships of that venture:

“In the first issue Mr. Ingalls apologized to his readers because the paper was not all that he had hoped. He says: ‘Material did not arrive until last Saturday morning, and we have had to unpack, lay our type, set up presses, set our ads and type for this, issue, and all in five days.’

“The material he refers to evidently came over the Northern Pacific railroad, to Ravalli, and was freighted across the reservation to the present site of Polson, and there transferred to steamer and brought to Demersville, for an old typecase still in The Inter Lake office bears the inscription, ‘C.O. Ingalls, Ravalli, Montana.’”

Ingalls was a serious practitioner of the art of journalism, and took his work seriously, as his opening announcement made clear: "This paper is owned by no political party or clique and proposes to work faithfully for this portion of Missoula county and its citizens."

Such has been the custom and intention of the Inter Lake ever since, with one small exception. In 1913, the newspaper was bought by a group of progressive followers of former President Theodore Roosevelt and became temporarily a mouthpiece for the Bull Moose Party until it was sold to Kalispell optometrist A.H. Howe in 1918 upon the demise of the Roosevelt’s ambitions.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves a bit.

Indeed, we haven’t even gotten the paper to Kalispell yet. That happened in December 1891, but it wasn’t like the Inter Lake had abandoned the town of Demersville for greener pastures. Actually, the Inter Lake seems to have been one of the last of the businesses to make the move from Demersville to the new town of Kalispell, which had been founded by Charles Conrad earlier in 1891.

Although Demersville was well positioned at the last easily navigable point on the Flathead River for a steamer boat, and thus was suited to receive boat traffic from Polson and freight and passengers from points south, Kalispell’s founding fathers were able to convince the Great Northern Railroad to bring its division point to Kalispell, and with it the heavy traffic between the East and West coasts.

So, the Inter Lake moved in 1891 along with almost all of Demersville to the new town. They brought their first building with them, and it remained at 131 First Avenue East for many years. For a while, the company was taken over by a stock company, and P.N. Bernard was editor and manager, but by 1893 it was back in the hands of Mr. Ingalls. The Inter Lake’s second individual owner, R.M. Goshorn, took the paper over from Ingalls on Jan. 1 1895. In the following summer he bought the Kalispell Graphic and consolidated it with the Inter Lake. The paper was published as a weekly until April 13, 1908, when Goshorn, saddened by the loss of a son in a drowning accident, turned his newspaper into a daily publication to fill the void in the lives of he and his wife.

It was just a few years later in 1915 when a young man named W.E. “Bill” O’Leary joined the staff of six carrier boys to hawk the Daily Inter Lake far and wide. Not long afterwards, O’Leary became an apprentice printer and was raised up to be mechanical superintendent. He remained with the paper for 59 years, retiring in 1974.

Not far from that mark was O’Leary’s longtime partner L.D. Spafford, who had been publisher of the competitor Kalispell Bee before being hired by the Bull Moose Party to edit the Inter Lake in 1916. He stayed on after the Bull Moose Party disbanded, and became co-owner with O’Leary in 1922. They owned the paper until 1949, at which time Stafford left the paper.

The newspaper was sold on Jan. 1, 1949, to Victor Morgan and D.L. McDermott of The Dalles, Oregon. Morgan also served as publisher. On July 1, 1951, Morgan’s group sold the Inter Lake to the Scripps League of Newspapers, which also owned the Coeur d’Alene Press in Idaho, and one of the partners was Coeur d’Alene publisher Burl Hagadone, whose family later owned the Daily Inter Lake outright. M.D. Glover acquired a substantial interest of the newspaper in the transfer, and became the Daily Inter Lake publisher on July 1, 1951.

Glover was succeeded by W.B. Sweetland on Dec. 12, 1954, and Sweetland remained with the paper until Feb. 1, 1960, when Joe F. Caraher took over as publisher. When he left, Managing Editor Burl Lyons was promoted to publisher on Nov. 13, 1963. He remained in that capacity until 1971 when newspaper owner Duane Hagadone asked him to take the helm at a recently purchased property in Connecticut. On Nov. 4 of that year, Hagadone named Charles G. “Chuck” Pettit as publisher of the Inter Lake. He was perhaps the youngest publisher in the company’s history at just 33.

In 1975, Pettit moved to another position in Hagadone Newspapers, and C. Patrick King was named publisher. In a sense, King’s reign at the top began the modern era of the Inter Lake, as it was during his tenure in 1979 that the newspaper moved into its current quarters at 727 East Idaho.

Publishers that followed him were Roy Wellman, Tom Kurdy (who served two separate tenures), Ron Peterson, Paul Burke, and Rick Weaver, our current publisher. Weaver, like Bill O’Leary so many years before, also started as a carrier boy for the Inter Lake. In fact they had similar paper routes on the west side of Kalispell. They also both advanced to the print shop and then pursued long careers in the journalism business. Although O’Leary stayed his entire 59 years with the Daily Inter Lake, Weaver has pursued a more diverse career for the past 50 years or so following his start as a paper boy and working in the mail room, including stints as circulation director and ad manager at the Inter Lake and publisher at the Havre Daily News, Bozeman Chronicle and Nampa’s Idaho Press-Tribune

Along with changes in ownership and the publisher’s office over the years, there were several important moves across town for the Inter Lake. From its first daily home at 131 First Ave. E., the newspaper in 1919 moved its printing plant temporarily to a wooden building two doors south on Second Street East. Back doors connected the printing plant and the business office, which remained in the building on First Avenue East, which was then converted into a brick building that still stands today. The new building was started in early spring and was finished by June when the printing plant was returned to the original location.

The newspaper boasted at that time, “The new building has the second largest skylight of any in Kalispell and the composing room is as bright as day, which adds to the comfort and convenience of the force.

“It has been our endeavor to construct as modern and convenient a print shop as there is in Montana, even if it is on a small scale, and we hope it will prove ample for the needs of the community.”

In 1932, the newspaper moved into the Whipps Building on Main Street. Then in 1948, it moved to 410 First Avenue West, where it stayed until 1965 when it moved to 300 First Avenue West in the building which now houses a gym just south of the downtown post office.

As noted, the Inter Lake moved to its present home on U.S. 2 in 1979. Thus, 2014 marks another important anniversary, as this is the 35th year in the current building, which was expanded in 2004 to accommodate a growing staff and press.

For the past 63 years, more than half of the newspaper’s existence, the ownership of the Daily Inter Lake has always included a Hagadone. Burl Hagadone became a partner by 1950, and his son Duane acquired the newspaper outright in the mid-1960s. Today Duane’s son, Brad Hagadone, is the president of Hagadone Newspapers, which operates 12 newspapers in Northwest Montana, including the Inter Lake.