by Jeanine and Kevin Buettner
nammy@montanasky.com
and Skip Via
skip@westvalleynaturalists.org
Editor’s Note (March 2024): In her research, Jeanine came across some interesting information related to the Ashely Creek Ditch. In the 1910 census for the area around the Grosswiler farm on Farm to Market, there was a boarding house with 20 men living in it. And all but two–the cooks in the house–were working on a canal ditch. Almost all of them were immigrants from England, Russia and Germany and in their 50’s, except for one who was in his 20’s. I would say these were the guys that built the Ashley ditch.
The Ashley Creek Ditch was an irrigation system developed in the early 1900s to supply water from Ashley Creek to farms in the west valley area of the Flathead. The Ditch was not a county or state project; rather, it was paid for and maintained by the families that used the water. It’s no longer there, having been dismantled in the late 1970s due to changing agricultural practices and the increasing availability of tapping directly into the aquifers for irrigation. But its story is a prime example of the ingenuity and work ethic that early settlers in the area shared.
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