The rustic little town of Whitefish, a.k.a. Stumptown, has its roots in one of the classic histories of the West. More than a century ago, when a railroad was first being put across the northern U.S., fortunes were made and lost on where each train stopped. So, when speculators heard that the Great Northern Railroad was coming through Montana, they bought up the land wherever it looked like a station might be put. The railroad tycoons, on their part, were constantly switching things around, moving the site of western Montana's proposed station from Kalispell to Columbia and finally to Whitefish. (Supposedly, Columbia consequently became Columbia Falls as a symbol of its fall from grace.) Heaven only knows why the rail barons finally decided on the Whitefish site (it probably isn't a particularly noble tale), but when they did, a town was born. The boom happened so fast that the trees were hardly chopped down before the buildings had sprung up. Hence the name Stumptown, as there were thousands and thousands of stumps littering the streets and yards of the entire town. Lumberjacks, trappers, miners, and assorted scoundrels flocked to the town, filling saloons, taverns, and the Cadillac Hotel. According to local legend, when they finally got around to building sidewalks, they used empty beer cans for the foundation. So, in a sense, even before Black Star arrived, it was a town built on beer. It was a town built by hardy, broad-shouldered men named Wink and Hub, Old Joe and Shorty (actually there were two Shorty's, Shorty Wiley and Shorty Gammel) and tough western women like Mrs. Emmet Lang. She grew up on the frontier plains and liked to tell visitors the tale of the soldier who escaped from Indians on his ice skates, and how the Indians wouldn't chase him because, as they watched him glide away down the river, they thought he must be a great god. All these stories can be found in the Whitefish museum, located, appropriately enough, in the Great Northern Railway station. There, amid the pictures of avalanches and forest fires and train wrecks, just near the opium pipe that was found in the old Chinese noodle restaurant, you'll find the first bottle of Black Star ever brewed. If you can't find it, just ask the curators, Frank Gregg, Jack Fletcher, and Flossie Davis; they'll be glad to help. For more information about Stumptown, visit the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce site.