The Blackfoot wind was brisk and sharp and clouds threatened occasional snow showers, but, undeterred, history buffs met at the Black Bridge for a walk down memory lane.

Milltown of the 30’s & 40’s was a town full of life. It had been founded and was still centered around work at the mills, first the Western Lumber Company and later ACM. According to A Grass Roots Tribute: The Story of Bonner, Montana, "by 1892 there were perhaps a dozen houses, a livery stable, a boarding-room house, and three saloons."

Businesses including the general store and pool hall faced the main thoroughfare which ran through Milltown and across the new highway bridge. Built in 1926, that bridge has now been commemorated as the Black Bridge, a new pedestrian bridge built as a result of the remediation and restoration of the Milltown Superfund project.

There were plenty of bars and boarding houses. Once, during Prohibition, the local pool hall was raided and the forbidden stores of alcohol were smashed outside the store leaving the lingering scent of booze for days afterward.

The house where Cal and Maybelle Bonnet lived was once the home of the local doctor, Dr. Coyngham. Now, it’s the home of Steve and Bev Cheff. Bev, Maybelle’s daughter serves as the Postmaster in Bonner.

The library was once on the “main drag” where the Milltown Market gas pumps stand. It was the community social center. Both Maybelle Bonnet and Lavonne Otto recall having their baby showers there. At one time Milltown had two grocery stores and two meat markets. Trempers had one of their first gas stations in Milltown.

The Milltown Post Office, now located east of Pine Grove, has had many Milltown locations, including Disbrow's IGA and the one time boarding house which now houses Balanced Physical Therapy.

Kids played outside a lot. Girls and boys loved to play softball. Kids also played football where the library building, currently housing an insulation company, now stands near the railroad tracks. When the mail train came through a metal arm on the train would swing out, snagging the mail sack hanging on a hook near the tracks at the train station.

There were about 4 water wells in Milltown. Around 5 PM each evening, kids would bring empty water buckets to fill at the wells. Their dads, walking home from work at the mill, would carry the filled pails home.

In the summer the circus would come to town and set up tents at the "Prairie" on the east side of Milltown. Kids could earn free tickets by carrying water to the circus animals.

As the group strolled to the end of Milltown and looked through the chain link fence, across the interstate highway and toward the Superfund remediation site, we were reminded that once another 30 or so houses stood there, now replaced by the interstate highway. Those homes were atop McCormick Hill, route of the original Mullan Road and a great wintertime sledding hill for Milltown kids.

At an earlier Roundtable meeting Millie Niemi Hanger observed that every time she travels east bound on the interstate, she drives across the site of her childhood home, a house now sited in West Riverside.

Jim Willis, life long resident, led the walk. Members of the group included Jim’s sister Maybelle Bonnet and his long time friend Rick Swanson, so stories flowed freely, warming the chilly evening. The April 19 walk was sponsored by the Bonner Area History Roundtable in celebration of Bike Walk Bus Week.