GREAT FALLS — Judy Ellinghausen sorts thousands of manilla folders, one by one, that contain tens of thousands of snippets of central Montana history. Anyone who lived in the area during the 20th century stands a good chance of finding a file with a family connection. Ellinghausen found one on the top floor of The History Museum, the home of the Cascade County Historical Society on Second Street South.
“When I was upstairs, I did out of curiosity go to the Es, and there was a story about my dad,” she said. It was a small newspaper clipping about her father’s gardening in Great Falls. Two afternoons per week, Ellinghausen diligently picks through the folders, which are stuffed into two dozen filing cabinets.
They are the reference library archives saved from the Great Falls Tribune building just before its sale in 2022. The folders are labeled by topic and contain newspaper clippings, notes and photos that might have accompanied the articles. The files depict everyday life for Great Falls residents, from small slices of life to major events.
If not for a local philanthropist, they might have disappeared alongside the Tribune newsroom. Ellinghausen, formerly a full-time archivist, is manually indexing the material for public research at The History Museum. Most of the assets are from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, though there are a handful that date back to the early decades of the 1900s.
For each folder, she looks for historically important photos to pull for safekeep.
