In the late 1920s, the Wan-I-Gan store was built on East River Road about midway between Livingston and Gardiner. In the Ojibwa language, a “wanigan” refers to a trunk or chest used for storing supplies. Besides selling tourist supplies and gasoline, the Wan-I-Gan had 12 cabins for fishermen, hunters, construction crews and overflow patients from Dr. Townsend’s small hospital at nearby Chico Hot Springs. It also served as a café, diner, general store and a delivery place for hard rock miners awaiting equipment.
The Whithorn family bought the Wan-I-Gan in 1948. At the time, Bill and Doris and their children were on the move from Billings and they were looking for a new home.
Doris once related the story of one holiday weekend prior to purchasing the Wan-I-Gan when she and Bill parked their car at some discreet distance and watched for hours to get an idea of how much business the place was generating. It was very busy that particular weekend and they ended up buying the store, but Doris later confessed that business never seemed to be as brisk as during their test survey.
It was at the Wan-I-Gan that Doris began to collect stories from the residents of the Paradise Valley, and to research them in the newspaper files at the Livingston Park County Public Library.
Bill also became an expert photographer as he made copies of photographs supplied by neighbors and friends. In 1965, through collaboration with Fred Martin of the Park County News, the Whithorns began to publish a series of some twenty local photo history books.
The Whithorns ran the Wan-I-Gan until 1976, when they moved to Livingston. In Livingston they were part of a group that established the Yellowstone Gateway Museum on Chinook Street.
In 2005, the Friends of the Yellowstone Gateway Museum, a nonprofit group, purchased all of the Whithorn books and copyrights from the Whithorn family.
After raising funds from the community, the Friends hoped after the purchase of the copyrights they would have a hefty monetary surplus. The surplus funds, together with income from annual book sales, would allow the republishing of out-of-print books, and publish similar new titles.
The Friends named their small publishing house the Wan-I-Gan Press after the place where the work all began. Although the fund raising surplus was not so hefty, the Friends did manage to print, reprint or publish the following four books:
“Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane,” by Herself. (1896, reprinted 2005); “Yankee Jim’s National Park Toll Road and the Yellowstone Trail” (1989, reprinted 2006); “Pics & Quotes of Yellowstone” (1972, reprinted 2009); and “A is for Aldridge, An Index for the Whithorn Books” by Richard J. Dysart, (published 2009).
This last volume is a list of over 12,000 names from all twenty of the Whithorn books. When used in conjunction with the new Whithorn Online Database created by Jon Watson, readers will be able to locate many, many people and places throughout Park County, Montana.
The Wan-I-Gan Press hopes to reprint one or more out-of-print Whithorn titles each year. Five titles are currently out-of-print: “Montana in the Good Old Days, No. 1”, “Photo History of Chico Lodge”, “Photo History of Aldridge: Coal Camp That Died A-bornin’”, “Photo History from Yellowstone Park”, and “Montana in the Good Old Days, No. 2.”
For more information about the Whithorns, the Friends of the Yellowstone Museum or the Whithorn collection, contact the Gateway Museum at 222-4184.
—Dick Dysart
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