Ted and Lila Kodalen…Dodson old-timers remember

By Eva Hallam Solberg

Published in the PCN on September 11, 1980

Lila Neibaur Kodalen was born to Isaac Augustus “Big Ike” Neibaur and Elizabeth Wilson Neibaur in 1902, the oldest of six children, one of whom died in infancy. Those of Lila’s siblings remaining (in 1980) are Rutb Tanner of Whitefish, and Enid Price of Dodson.

Her father came to Montana from Wyoming with a trail herd of cattle, and he became a ranch hand for several ranches, as well as ranch foreman for Lazure Ereaux. He homesteaded at the mouth of Peoples Creek on the Milk River southwest of Dodson.

Lila’s mother, Elizabeth, at age 11, cared for her motherless brothers and sisters, in a sod house built into the side of a hill in South Dakota. Elizabeth came to Montana with a brother in 1889. She taught for ten years, one term of which was in a saloon-turned-school building in Landusky. The floors had such wide cracks that pencils rolled into them and were lost. She filed on a homestead in the Bear Paw Mountains. Ike and Elizabeth were married in 1901 in Chinook.

Though Lila was born in Malta, they lived in Dodson and she attended school there. “I was taller than the other children, and Papa used to tell me, “You’ll be six feet tall in no time!” Lila said, “It appalled me to think of it!” She stopped growing, however, at the height of five feet, three inches.

Read the rest of the story in "Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana"
Click here to order