NOTICE OF WATER RATE INCREASE FOR THE WOODS BAY/LAKE COUNTY WATER AND SEWER DISTRICT NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Board of Directors of the Woods Bay/Lake County Water and Sewer District, Lake County, Montana, met on the 16th day of September 2024, at 11:00 a.m., at the District office at 108 Harbor Heights Blvd in Bigfork, Montana, for a scheduled meeting. The District Board intends to increase rates by 5% to cover increased operating expenses for the water system, effective December 1, 2024. Al persons interested may appear and be heard at said time and place. For further...

Sunny Katherinne White pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and "incidents involving another person" in the March 2023 death of Mika Westwolf.

POLSON, Mont. – A plea deal has been reached in the case involving Sunny White, who pleaded guilty to two charges, including vehicular homicide, following the death of Mika Westwolf in March 2023. The agreement was made during White's pre-trial hearing at the Lake County district courthouse. "I feel...

Hungry Horse NewsThe number of antlerless white-tailed deer hunting licenses will be increased in the Flathead Valley’s Hunting District 170 following the detection of chronic wasting disease in a whitetail buck near the county landfill recently.Montana Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Patrick Tabor OK’d the request to increase the number of 170-00 Deer B licenses for individual hunters to two, according to a Fish, Wildlife and Parks press release. Previously, hunters were allowed to purchase one. The additional licenses are available to purchase over the counter effective immediately. The general deer and elk hunting season opened Saturday, Oct. 26.This week CWD was...

Hungry Horse NewsColumbia Falls running back Brodie Tkachyk made the most of senior night, rushing for 102 yards and four touchdowns on 19 carries as the Wildcat football team trounced Ronan 45-8 at home Friday.The senior had rushing touchdowns of 2, 3, 11 and 1 yards. Senior Cooper Ross also had a 6-yard rushing touchdown and junior wide receiver Easton Brooks also had a great night with a 19-yard TD catch and 5-yard TD catch.Quarterback Banyan Johnston was 11 of 18 for 115 yards and one TD pass. Johnston left the game late in the first half on what looked...

A boom in cryptocurrency. The next financial crisis. A year of chaos. This is what the future holds in 2025, according to local psychic, astrologist and ordained minister Rose Stuart, who recently returned to the Flathead Valley and reopened her metaphysical shop and psychic services business in downtown Kalispell. At...

The Making Place, a newly formed nonprofit in Flathead Valley, is striving to create a community makerspace for artists, makers and creators of all kinds.   “We want to be as all-inclusive and accessible as possible, so that anyone who wants to make something can be included. Whether they want to make something casually and hang out with other people, or if someone is making things to start a professional business,” said Justin Barry, one of the group’s organizers.  “Artist can feel selective. But maker? It’s inclusive. We welcome and want to help all levels of making experience,” Barry said.   After...

The Montana high school Fall sports playoffs are about to begin. For Sanders and Mineral County schools, the first post-season action takes place tonight (October 29) in Plains and St. Ignatius. The Plains Trotters volleyball team hosts Troy in a Western District 7B play-in game at 6 pm in the Plains gym.  The winner of the match advances to the district semi-final round versus Thompson Falls at 1:45 pm, in Thompson Falls. In St. Ignatius, the Mission Bulldog volleyballers have a home game, also 6 pm tonight (October 29), against Superior.  The winner of that match advances to the semis in T...

The Bulldogs are the No. 4 seed heading into the first round of Western A football playoffs this Friday, when they’ll take on No. 5 seed Bigfork at the Dog Pound at 7 p.m.Whitefish finished out the regular season in Browning last Friday with a 69-0 win, bringing the team to 6-3 overall and 5-2 in league. Carson Gulick threw for two touchdowns, one to CJ Thew and one to Jordan Harmon, coming out 7-for-9 on passing as well as and running for another TD. Seven different Bulldogs scored rushing touchdowns as Whitefish on the way to racking up 249 yards on...

State Cross Country resultsBoys 13th Overall Class A Ty Anderson - 47th (18:07)Nic Gustavson - 56th (18:14) Sean Cotman - 63rd (18:29) Sam Ayers - 66th (18:31) Otto Schurke - 104th (19:46) Fisher Sliter - 127th (20:33) Gavin Toshack - 157th (24:42) Girls 21st Overall Class A Hadley Nollan - 58th place (22:17) Shannon Woll - 126th (25:42) Colbie Sullivan - 129th (26:11) Sasha Steyee - 136th (27:11) Naomi Elwell - 139 (28:01) Ava Reynolds - 140th (28:11) Maddie Pomeroy - 148th (30:47)     Hadley Nollan runs the state cross country race in Missoula Saturday, Oct. 26. (Seth Anderson/Hungry Horse News)      Girls XC team Toren Wenz, Hadley Nollan, Ava Reynolds, Madeline Pomeroy, Sasha Steyee, Naomi Elwell, Colbie Sullivan, Shannon Woll. (Courtesy/Ryan Nollan)      Boys XC team Ty Anderson, Sam Ayers, Nic Gustavson, Sean Cotman, Fisher Sliter, Gavin Toshack and Noah Hamilton-Dixon. (Courtesy/Ryan Nollan)  

National Good Neighbor Day, Sept. 28, has its roots in Lakeside. One Bigfork business has worked to grow that tradition, and this September celebrated one year of promoting positivity. “It’s just our slogan, ‘Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,’” Katie Hicks of Katie Hicks State Farm said. It inspired her to recognize and support people doing good for their community, starting last September.  National Good Neighbor Day has similar beginnings. Becky Mattson of Lakeside encouraged her community to share simple acts of kindness, such as sharing homemade treats and organizing community events. She hoped to recognize acts of kindness and support. In 1978, the U.S. senate established National Good Neighbor Day. At Katie Hicks State Farm, the community is invited to submit their friends and neighbors for a monthly drawing, naming the Good Neighbor of the Month. Winners get a gift card to a local restaurant and recognition on the company’s social media platform.  "In a time when negative news can dominate, it’s so important to spotlight the good happening around us," Hicks said. "Our aim is to celebrate those individuals who are a positive force in our community." 

It was a hard week of volleyball for the St. Regis Lady Tigers, who faced a pair of volleyball powers this one, losing in Drummond, 3-0, then falling at home to Charlo, also by a 3-0 score. The Lady Tigers put up a good fight against Drummond Thursday despite falling 25-11 in the first set.  In that win, the Lady Trojans took a 3-0 lead, then steadily expanded it the rest of the way en route to a 25-11 set one victory and a 1-0 match lead. The Lady Tigers regrouped and pushed Drummond to the max in set number two...

As increasing food costs and other everyday expenses push more Montanans to local food banks for help, the Town Pump Charitable Foundation is matching over $1.1 million to help raise $4 million during its annual fundraising campaign for food banks, including the Bigfork Food Bank.   A record 116 food banks statewide are participating this year in the “Help Those in Need” campaign, which originated in 2001. The campaign has raised about $52 million for Montana food banks in 22 years, including nearly $12 million in matching grants from the Town Pump Charitable Foundation. The campaign runs through Nov. 30. Locally, the...

The Bigfork Community Players start their season by poking fun at the fictional Cornley Drama Society, who in their attempt to produce a drama, Murder at Haversham Manor, instead produce a wild comedy of errors in The Play That Goes Wrong. (Of course, this is a wild exaggeration of anything that might happen in a real community theater production.) As you watch from the perspective of the audience, a community theater’s attempt to produce a serious play is quickly going from bad to utterly disastrous. The underlying 1920s whodunit is plagued by everything a serious company never wants in a show,...

With the state volleyball playoffs getting underway this weekend, the Hot Springs Savage Heat will come into the post-season with a 3-0 sweep at home over Victor this past week hopefully giving them some playoff momentum. The Heat, who concluded the regular season with a 5-10 overall record, won two of their last three games. Against Victor, 1-6 on the year, the first set was a nail-biter that featured numerous ties and lead changes.  The opening set was last tied at 23 before Hot Springs was able to score two straight points and pull out a 25-23 set win that staked them...

Eric Jacobsen, a private equity investor who splits his time between Park City, Utah, and Whitefish, announced earlier this month that he has secured a contract to purchase Holland Lake Lodge near Condon.In social media messages sent to some local community members and press, Jacobsen stated that he is moving forward with applying for a special use permit from the Flathead National Forest to operate the historic property on public land. He also said that due to confidentiality provisions in the contract, he was canceling two public meetings scheduled to discuss the lodge’s future with the Swan Valley community.“The parties...

It was a long-awaited, much-anticipated showdown in the world of Montana six-player football. Both of Sanders County’s six-player teams, Hot Springs and Noxon, came into the regular season finale with 4-1 West 6-player conference records, tied with Lincoln for the conference’s top spot. At state was not just county bragging rights, but a shot at post-season play. Both teams featured explosive offense’s capable of 50-plus points on any night. A scoring gluttony was expected. When the final horn sounded, it was Hot Springs with a 57-point outburst, buoyed by the return of standout senior running back/linebacker John Waterbury, who had been sidelined since...

Bigfork Art and Cultural Center has received the lease from Community Foundation for a Better Bigfork for the space next door that used to house Bigfork’s library, an endeavor that will change the landscape of the building.  BACC hopes to turn its current gallery, located on the ground floor of 525 Electric Avenue, into a history museum to showcase the village’s logging and agricultural roots, Indigenous history, local pioneers, and development. Meanwhile, the old library space will be converted to a gallery with a classroom space for workshops. “A history and cultural center that includes a makerspace would enrich the community,...

And just like that, someone flipped the regular season off-on switch, and the Montana high school sports regular season was done. It was just the other day, I’m sure, that I embarked on my attempt to gather information from coaches and ADs in Mineral and Sanders counties about the rapidly approaching football, volleyball, cross-country and, this season for the first time, soccer seasons. There are seven high schools in those two counties, and I do my best to get from my home in Plains to all those schools and their sports programs.  Thompson Falls, the largest school enrollment wise in my...