8/24/04—Kalispell, MT—Kickin it up a Notch

The approach on Hwy. 93 in to Kalispell is not pretty; it’s all torn up for about six miles of bumpy dirt road controlled by flaggers. After our foray to three commercial RV parks into which we would not fit, we’ve ended up dry camping in an old parking lot. Boy, it’s been a show today!

As we’ve sat here in the rain, we’ve witnessed a scene out of the 50’s or 60’s with about every old pickup worthy of its tired old tires trying to spin donuts across the empty parking lot and through the deep trough of water that has puddled. The final straw as we were eating dinner was a pristine ’68 originally colored olive green fastback Mustang, whose driver seemed bent upon seeing if the thing would stay upright as it went round and round burning through turns and donuts. What nutso would do this?! What is it about Montana drivers that necessitate such extreme behavior? One, we could have thought an aberration—an entire afternoon full of these drivers has us feeling like we’ve been sitting at a demolition derby at the racetrack.

Don’t let the above detract you from what’s nice about this town however—its well preserved old time downtown and fabulous early residential streets filled with lovingly cared for homes ranging in age from the late 1800’s through the 1930’s and 40’s. There were simply too many blocks to drive down, so here’s just a sampling.

Kalispell is an Indian word for “Prairie above the Lake”. When transcontinental railroad building was underway, Charles Conrad received a hot tip from the head of the Great Northern Railway that the Flathead area would be the place to move to. Conrad followed the advice, the railroad arrived in 1891; a couple of smaller towns merged and moved to this location and Conrad prospered as never before! Today his mansion is available for touring and houses a museum. We didn’t tour, but nonetheless I walked the beautiful grounds and snapped pictures.

Downtown Kalispell on Main Street is about six blocks worth of historic buildings on the National Historic Register from the 1890’s, including the Opera Hall.

Fifteen miles north lies Whitefish, MT which sports the 1800’s Great Northern Depot, now posing as an Amtrak station. Inside are the original baggage scales, available for weighing big items—just like Marc is doing in the photo. Whitefish is still fondly called Stumptown, a nickname earned because it was originally densely forested and took six years to clear the timber from downtown. In the old photograph taken from 1904 one can note the stumps! Whitefish recently enjoys much notoriety due to the proximity of one of Montana’s preeminent ski resorts, Big Mountain, featuring about 300 inches of snow a season and a vertical drop of over 2000 feet. Whitefish’s small downtown is densely packed with traffic and is not suitable for large RVs.

Our next journal entry should be from Glacier National Park as soon as the rain clears.