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Dan Whetstone
1879 – 1966
Inducted
August 18, 1972
When Dan Whetstone, a young newspaperman from Minnesota, arrived
at Cut Bank, Mont., in June 1909, the conductor said, “You’ll
take one look at the burg and catch the next train for somewhere
else.”
He was mistaken,
for Whetstone established the Cut Bank Pioneer Press the following
month and remained as publisher
until his death Feb. 5, 1966.
As Whetstone put it, “Not the town itself but the surrounding
scene was what caught [my] rapture – the lush green landscape
stretching away on all sides, the snow-crowned Rockies to the
west, the new land.”
He asked Cut Bank residents if they wanted a newspaper and,
though some were indifferent, many thought a paper would be
timely,
for “they sensed the coming of the homestead seekers and
a time of transition.”
Whetstone had arrived in a rough little frontier town. There
were five saloons, which never closed and had five bartenders
for each shift, and there was Gerty and her women of the night.
But Whetstone saw something else and he described that vision
in his salutatory editorial:
“In Cut Bank there exists a combination of resources as
yet undeveloped that cannot but assure for the town a splendid
destiny. Coupled
with this is the spirit of enterprise and an expanding future,
a hospitality that gives welcome and good cheer to the newcomer,
bidding him to share in the boundless opportunities of this fine
new region of the West. And the people don’t say ‘How
do you do’ – they say ‘Hello, Bud.’”
Whetstone was born March 4, 1879, in Franklin, Minn., where
he subsequently taught school and was publisher of the Franklin
Tribune. After eight years with the Tribune he decided he needed
a new challenge in a new community, and he started west in
search
of a town that needed a newspaper. He found that town in Cut
Bank and he devoted the next 57 years to serving the community.
In 1956 he recounted his experiences in a book, “Frontier
Editor.” In the early 1920s Whetstone served as publicity director for
Gov. Joseph M. Dixon. He was a delegate to the Republican National
Convention of 1932 and 1936, and from 1939 to 1948 he was Republican
National Committeeman for Montana.
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