The first requirement to discussing Samuel Wilford Gebo's exciting adventures is to learn to pronounce his surname, which is French, "Gibeau," and later Americanized. Thus, it rhymes with the name of our Montana town, Wibaux, and begins with a "zh" sound. He was born in Canada in 1862, raised near Ogdensburg, New York, lived in Minnesota, and settled in Montana early in the 1890s. He formed the Clarks Fork Coal Company and developed the Gebo Mine near Fromberg, Montana, which was named "Gebo" at the time.

In 1900 he and Henry Frank of Butte formed the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company an...