Sheepish Courier Memories

The picture in the Feb. 3 issue of The Glasgow Courier triggers some additional memories concerning the early day sheep and wool industry.  Many of our Western states, including Montana, grew and prospered because of sheep.  If you sit down with area history books you will find that many of our early day residents, as well as present day cattle ranchers, got their start with sheep.  We may have a few local residents who can remember how wool was transported before grain trucks and semis were on the scene.  Wool was an important source of income and had to be taken to market somehow.  I have a picture that was taken in our state of a long wagon train of wool being pulled by a steam engine tractor.  Where was the nearest woolen mill?  I remember loading wool on train cars for shipment and even taking a load to South Dakota, but did Montana have a woolen mill?  Did your school history cover the processing of wool like it did the invention of the cotton gin?  Can you remember all of the benefits of wool, or only the disadvantages of it, like how itchy it might have been? 

This last tidbit is FYI only, but Montana presently has a wool processing plant located in Malta.  I for one would love to take a tour of this facility to see what amazing things wool has presently lent itself to. Sometimes we look so much at the new, that we forget to look well at the past.