Visitors From Idaho
Coeur d'Alene Excursionists to the Number of 500 Come to Missoula.
Given the Freedom of the City and Entertained in Hospitable Style.
The Enterprising Citizens of Missoula Make Up the Expenses of the Train -- State News.
Missoula, Aug. 15. -- [Special.] -- Missoula business men have for the past week been busily engaged in perfecting the arrangements for a free excursion for the Coeur d'Alene people to this city. The enterprising element of the city was determined that there should be an independent Missoula excursion, regardless of expense. The committee selected went energetically to work. Although the rates required by the railroad company, $8 per capita for the excursionist was thought to be exorbitant, the people of Missoula have cheerfully gone down in their pockets and subscribed liberally to make the matter a grand success. A committee composed of twenty leading business men on Friday at two p. m. boarded the special train of seven passenger coaches and were pulled through to Wallace that evening. It returned Saturday loaded with 500 people from all parts of the Coeur d'Alene mining country, of whom 125 were ladies. They were met at the depot by a large concourse of Missoulians, with the Twenty-fifth infantry band, and were escorted through the city and to the court house square. In the evening a dance and banquet were given, in which the visitors enjoyed themselves without stint.
The day in Missoula resembled a Fourth of July celebration. The principal buildings were decorated with flags and bunting and the explosion of all kinds of fire works aided to remind one of the great legal holiday.
The opening of this new line to the Coeur d'Alenes is indeed an occasion for festivity, not only for Missoula but to Montana generally. It makes Montana commercial towns the natural supply points for the large and rapidly growing population of the Coeur d'Alenes, and gives the people of the Coeur d'Alenes an outlet to competitive markets.