I am writing a history column featuring the high school bowl. While I remember it, my memories are clouded. Two questions:

Was there really a tunnel connecting the old high school gym to the bowl?

How deep was it?

Thanks to those of you with functional memories.

I skated there many times and marched with the band there, as well. Also have a video of some skating in the 1950s and it looks just as I remember it--maybe 6 feet deep.

Thanks to those of you with functional memories.

Personally, I am offended by the sly digs directed at the mchome.com posters.

I remember a kind of "shed" with a door - embedded into the earth inside of the bowl. It was on the West side of the bowl embankment (East end of the last building). I think the building it was under was the machine or auto shop of the time?

I saw inside once - it looked like it went back some distance but I got the impression that it was a series of pipes and pumps (very noisy, too). So, since I'm already vaguely filling in blanks I'd say it was an access tunnel that sure looked like it accommodated utility pipes and walkway. I'd also be interested in hearing some real recollections, too.

It was a great ramp to go off with a sled.

Once upon a time - the auto shop included wood working, drafting, metal fabrication using both electric and acetyline welding. Before there was a readily available supply of acetyline in bottles, we used to make our own in a kind of basement of the building. Access was by a door in the bowl's west side (east side of the building) into a concrete bunker adjacent to the building. There we would mix the appropriate ingredients with water to make the acetyline gas used in the welding.

David Schott had some great photos of the school on flickr, but I cannot find them right now. I believe he had one of the tunnel to the bowl.

He sent them to me and I am delighted. I may have to split the column in two, one just on the bowl and one on ice-skating in Miles City. Thanks everyone!!!!

Amorette: I have a video of some skaters on the bowl that was taken from film made in the '50s. Are you interested? While pondering the many uses formerly made of the bowl, I was reminded of the frequency of the flooding of the it for purposes of skating. Many people could utilize it without interfering with others doing the same. We even burned old tires for heat(I hate to admit) and used an old box car for protection from too much wind.
On another note, there were several rinks scattered around to town. One on the corner of Jordan and Stower, one in the east Main neighborhood, one near the Milwaukee shops, that I knew of and all kept flooded with city water.

Just have to figure out how to capture some video and polish up the column. THANKS everyone!

Bill, you are correct. There was also a rink by Roosevelt school, one on Wells Street by the river and one on Comstock in an empty lot. I believe that there was also a Rink at South Gate for a while.

I am sending you a video of Mary Lynn Zuelke skating in the CCHS Bowl about 1953. She is now married to Vern Taylor and they still live in MC. They graduated with me in the class of 1956.

Bill Zook gave me his copy of Mary Lynn and family skating. It is great!

Somewhere there is some 8mm film of a bunch of us from the Signal Butte 4-H club skating at the bowl in the 1970's.

If it's the video that I think it is, the man that looks like he was born with skates on is MaryLynn's brother in law, Dwight Roberts. His son, my dad, inherited that same coordination and athleticism.

Then they invented Ralgrow and I ended up a lumbering mutant with two left feet.

...was just meandering through some of the great photos Bruce Boe contributed to the MF Flickr group. You can see a different perspective of the little tunnel entrance as seen in Dave's shots.





Larger version as well as more in his series here:
http://www.flickr.com/pho...709985900/


Sorry, either the forum is chopping the link or Flickr is having a bad hair moment.

[This message has been edited by Dan Mowry (2/24/2011)]

So this photo has to be prior to 1978 as there is no addition on the farm shop which happened in 1977-78.

I have to say the only thing I think of when someone mentions the bowl is that smell. That God awful smell the spring of 1988 (I think that was the year).

The "bowl" was the best place to skate. I lived across the street and when the City workers got it flooded and the first good freeze hit, then winter started. Roy Slusher, Mr. Powell would let it set up and if temps were right they would get an old fire hose out and lay out a layer of water that was as good as any Zamboni. The warming hut was a old box car with benches all around the perimeter. The floor was torn wood and in pretty bad but you did not care, you where just in out of the cold.
And Mr. Zook is right, no tunnel just the hole under the sidewalk along the east side of the auto shop where they stored the old football blocking sled.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. The depth was about 5-7 feet. I know that it was partially filled up at least once during one of those really ugly thunderstorms that hailed out the Northside of town in late August approx 1959.

Do you remember when the class of 65 in preparation for the freshman initiation, they almost filled it to the top with trash for the freshman to clean up, the seniors had the distinction of being initiated twice, everyone involved got to help clean it up

I remember a football coach kicking a football the whole length of the bowl because he was mad at a player, not me. I also learned to play hockey on that ice with the Wright boys who came from Canada with Father Wright at the Episcopal Church. And learning how to drive on ice at three in the morning, wowie.

There is indeed a tunnel, as I have been in it. Very interesting. I too have home movies of skating and sledding there as a kid in the mid and late 50s.

The photo is prior to the 82/83 school year, in 81/82 the Auto shop was in the white building South of the farm shop. The wood shop was in the North East corner of the old building. The utility shed and the PCR (portable class room) in the photo are where the new auto shop would be in the 82/83 year. I believe this photo is early 80's,,, am I close?

Oops,, I'm way off, I just noticed the area across the tracks from the school,,,, those grain elevators haven't been there for a very long time. I give up!