News

Controlling Chronic Wasting Disease

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According to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, this could be a record year for testing for chronic wasting disease across Montana. So far, 3,386 samples have been collected, compared to 2,966 last year.
The testing is an effort to document the spread of CWD, a fatal and contagious neurological disease affecting deer, elk and moose. While the disease hasn’t been proven to infect humans, FWP strongly recommends against eating meat from infected animals.

Thanksgiving back then

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What was Thanksgiving like in Lewistown in the early 1900s? A photo from the Lewistown Public Library might indicate the food element wasn’t much different, even at the local jail.
The Fergus County Jail was the subject of a timely photo shared by the Montana Memory Project last week. An online source for historic digitized photos and documents from across Montana, the MMP is home to many old photos and documents from Central Montana.  

A fair deal

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“I just saw things that could be done better, so I kept on working on it.”
That’s how Hilger rancher Alan Shammel explains volunteering for 10 years as a member of the fair board.
First appointed to take over the remaining two years of an outgoing board member’s term, Shammel was reappointed twice to the volunteer, and highly intensive, job of fair board member. And he loved it.

Flying high

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Fergus High School is the winner of a national distinguished school award, based on having the highest increase in graduation rates of 143 Montana high schools.

According to Jack O’Conner, federal programs director for the Montana Office of Public Instruction, the award is based solely on the numbers submitted by the schools to OPI.

Diekhans welcomed as new city/county attorney

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After a months-long search, the Lewistown City attorney/Fergus County chief deputy county attorney position is finally filled.
The Fergus County Attorney and Lewistown City Manager have chosen Theresa Diekhans to fill the split role, which has been vacant since former attorney Monte Boettger’s retirement in December 2020. During the vacancy, the City of Lewistown contracted a firm in Great Falls to handle civil work, while the Fergus County Attorney’s Office did the prosecution work for the city.

Cats or Griz?

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Today, the Montana State University Bobcats will take on the University of Montana Grizzlies in the 120th “Brawl of the Wild” in Missoula. The state rivalry got its start on Nov. 26, 1897 in Bozeman, and the Grizzlies lead the series, 73-41-5. The match is the fourth oldest active rivalry in the FCS and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. A rivalry that old is not without fans in all corners of the state, including Lewistown. The News-Argus wanted to know…Who are you rooting for this Saturday, the Cats or the Griz?

How’s the hunting?

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Effects of the drought didn’t end with the summer season, and hunters looking to harvest big game this year are seeing the impacts of the warm, dry, and windy fall as the fourth Sunday of the season approaches.
On Tuesday, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks reported hunter success in north-central Montana remained below the yearly average, and the number of animals checked at the Augusta station is the lowest since at least 1994.

If you build it, they will come

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What started as a flooded depression in Frank Day Park has grown into much more, all thanks to the work of volunteers on a mission to build an ice skating rink. Little did they know they weren’t just building a rink, but a community of people dedicated to improving skating in the area.  

“Make and maintain ice and infrastructure to improve ice skating in Central Montana,” said Bruce Marsden, president of the Lewistown Ice Skating Association. “That’s our mission.”

Worst thing ever

By the end of the second day of symptoms, Eugene Neal knew whatever he had was worse than just a cold. Testing confirmed it was COVID.
Neal expected to be sick just a few days, but 14 days later, with symptoms getting more severe, he ended up hospitalized with pneumonia and blood clots in his lungs.
While most people with COVID-19 say it is like a bad case of the flu, a few unlucky patients are in for a very bumpy ride.

Digitizing history

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Teresa Simko often likens herself to the Wizard of Oz, working behind the curtain to digitize physical documents in courthouses across the West. Her job as a Digital Preservation Team Leader for the company ArcaSearch has brought her and a colleague to Lewistown to digitize 275 Fergus County record books over two months.
The project, which began in October, will bring thousands of pages of county records dating back to the late 1800s into the 21st Century.