William M. Bole
1858 – 1932

Inducted October 19, 1963

William McClure Bole was 33 when he arrived almost penniless in Montana in 1891.

During the previous 12 years in St. Paul, he had worked as a printer, bought an interest in a weekly and gained prominence in municipal politics. Bole amassed what was then a sizable fortune, but when he returned from a walking tour of England, Scotland and Ireland, he found that he had lost his investments during an economic depression.

He moved west and joined the Great Falls Leader as a printer, a trade he had learned as a boy on the St. Johnsbury (Vt.) Caledonian and at the Riverside Press in Boston. Soon he was reporting for the paper, and then he was promoted to city editor. In 1895 Bole and O.S. Warden bought the Great Falls Tribune. Phenomenal success followed and after five years the only publication in Montana to pay higher dividends was the Anaconda Standard. The partners were forced to sell the paper to W.A. Clark in 1900, and Bole purchased the Bozeman Chronicle and moved to Bozeman with his wife, Elizabeth (Dow), whom he had married in 1881. They had one son, William Symington.

In 1905 Bole left the Chronicle to rejoin his former partner, O.S. Warden, in repurchasing the Great Falls Tribune. Twelve years later Bole sold the Chronicle, but he served as editor of the Tribune until his retirement in 1927.

Bole’s interest in education flourished in these later years, and he was instrumental in reorganizing the University during a critical period while a member of the State Board of Education from 1916 to 1920. He also was a trustee of the Montana State Historical Society. A prominent Democrat, he twice served as a presidential elector. 

He was born May 30, 1858, in South Ryegate, Vt., the son of a Presbyterian minister, and he died at his home in Bozeman on Oct. 10, 1932, at the age of 74. Eulogies filled Montana papers, and among them was one in the Great Falls Tribune written by his old friend, O.S. Warden.

“Straight as an arrow, William Bole in his long editorial career went to the truth. Knowing the truth and always holding to the truth, with strong conviction but friendly consideration he wrote the comment of the day.”

Return to Hall of Fame main page

Return to UM School of Journalism