Fire damages Choteau Acantha newspaper building

CHOTEAU — A fire damaged part of the Choteau Acantha’s building between 2 and 4 a.m. Tuesday. No one was injured. The blaze nearly destroyed one of the building’s three rooms and severely damaged items in adjacent rooms. 

Officials have not yet determined the cause of the fire at the newspaper’s office. The Teton County Sheriff’s Office and Teton County Fire & Rescue  declined to comment Tuesday on the ongoing investigation. 

The Choteau Acantha is a weekly publication that serves Choteau and the surrounding communities. Owners Melody and Jeff Martinsen purchased the paper in 1990. In their roughly 35-year tenure, they have not missed publishing an edition.

The Martinsens said they will still deliver the weekly newspaper Wednesday morning. The Choteau Acantha staff sent this week’s edition to be printed in Bozeman on Monday night. On Tuesday, a representative of the newspaper picked the print editions up from Conrad. The Martinsens spent Tuesday morning picking ceiling tiling off their label maker, labeling the newspapers with delivery addresses and then dropping off the copies at the post office for distribution.

“We have no intention of letting this stop the 131st year of continuous publication of the Choteau Acantha,” Melody Martinsen said in an interview Tuesday. “We pick up the pieces and we keep going on.”

The blaze was first reported by Caine Gray, a bartender working roughly a block away from the Acantha building at the Choteau American Legion.  Gray noticed thick smoke in the street when he left work around 2:20 a.m.

“The way this was concentrated, I knew something wasn’t right,” Gray said. “So I hit the alleys.”

Gray called the Teton County Sheriff’s Department before driving around Choteau in search of the fire. In 2021, Gray rescued his two children from his blazing home in the middle of the night. Within minutes, he spotted smoke billowing from the window’s of the Acantha building. Teton County Fire & Rescue, Fairfield Volunteer Fire Department and Choteau Volunteer Fire Department sent  25 firemen and five engines to put out the blaze. 

Melody and Jeff Martinsen salvaged six computers in addition to several other pieces of equipment and assorted documents. Though the rescued items sustained some damage from smoke, soot and water, “they’re all in working condition, which is an amazing testament to how fast our firefighters locked it down,” Melody Martinsen said.

“The whole staff, they’re great people,” Gray said. “We would do anything and everything for them.”

Community members have offered the Martinsens and Choteau Acantha staff workspaces, office supplies and food.  

“They say it takes a village,” Gray said. “ And I think Choteau’s about the best village you can get.”