Big Prairie—beautiful, rugged, and remote—nestles between the North Fork of the Flathead River and timbered foothills. Even today the area is accessible only via an unimproved 1901 wagon road. Johnnie (John J.) Walsh first came to Big Prairie working as a freighter hauling oil from the railhead at Belton, Montana, into Canada. Walsh, born in 1885, grew up on a homestead near Columbia Falls where his parents were among the first settlers. Following their example, he filed a homestead claim here in 1907 and married schoolteacher Mary Harriet Smith in 1909. Like their homesteading neighbors, the couple grazed livestock and cultivated a small garden. Although Big Prairie’s remoteness discouraged visitors, tourism in Glacier National Park may have encouraged Walsh to build this guest lodge as a replacement residence in 1922. Walsh did the framing himself. He cut the timber and then horses pulled the logs through a homemade planing device. Neighbors Charles Schoenberger and Ed, Emil, and Axel Peterson helped raise the walls and finish the lodge. Clapboard covers the frame gable end while massive round logs, hewn on the interior and originally chinked with moss, form the walls. The Walshes occupied the first story, but the second floor interior and the guests’ log privy/shower were never finished. About this time, the park’s efforts to curb poaching may have discouraged local tourism, prompting the Walshes to abandon their hope of guests. Although the lodge and privy were moved from the original nearby homestead site in 1963, the nearly identical setting has preserved the homestead’s historic ambiance.
]]>Constructed in 1939, the bunkhouse now known as the Boys Dorm has an L-shaped plan with a small porch marking the entrance. Small gables interrupt the roofline, bringing light into the interior. The one-story cross-gable building provided housing for seasonal fire and Civilian Conservation Corps crews assigned to the Big Creek station. In 1966, the Forest Service chose Big Creek as an intra-regional fire-fighting headquarters. To accommodate the expanded crews, it relocated a second bunkhouse now the Girls Dorm from the Coram Ranger Station near Hungry Horse. That bunkhouse, also originally built in 1939, looks much the same as the original bunkhouse except for the placement of its front door. Both buildings were based on standard plans provided by Region One’s central office. The plans specified frame construction, with the use of logs for structural support, and sawed cedar shingle siding. In the 1980s, interregional crews in Boise, Idaho, and elsewhere eclipsed the need for remote stations like Big Creek, and the station closed. The buildings went unused until 1989, when the Forest Service authorized the Glacier Institute to house youth education programs.
]]>In 1930, three years after building the Ranger’s House, the Forest Service constructed this one-and-one-half-story, shingle-clad building. First used as a warehouse, it features a high gambrel roof and a screened-in single-story entrance porch. Although it is the only building on this site to sport a gambrel roof, gambrel roof designs were used elsewhere in Region One, including the Coram Ranger Station. The style had the advantage of creating usable space on the second story without the added expense of constructing full second-story walls. As staffing grew, the Forest Service converted the building into a cookhouse as it was spacious enough for a kitchen, dining area, and areas for relaxation. Inside, exposed square posts and center beams provide structural support, allowing for an open plan between kitchen, dining areas, and common rooms. A central stairway accesses the attic, where the building’s rough sawn joists and hand-peeled wooden rafters remain visible. Among those to use the building were crews at the station under the auspices of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program to put unemployed, unmarried men to work.
]]>In 1917-18, the Forest Service recognized the Big Creek Ranger Station as the “most important secondary protection station site in the Lower North Fork district.” Ten years later, the Forest Service reinforced the designation by building this one-and-one-half-story permanent residence. The oldest extant building at the station, the 1927 Ranger’s House originally doubled as the station’s office. Its design displays Craftsman influences combined with a rustic aesthetic, a typical format for USDA Forest Service buildings in the West and particularly in Northern Region One. Coursed wood shingles cover the gable-roofed frame dwelling. The home’s projecting eaves, its exposed rafter tails, and its inviting, full-length front porch reference the Craftsman style. Interior detailing, such as the kitchen’s beaded wainscoting and the living room’s wooden window trim and tongue-in-groove fir flooring, also shows Craftsman style influence. The choice of the Craftsman style reflected national and local architectural trends as well as the Forest Service’s building philosophy, which included utility, respect for nature, and harmony with the environment.
]]>The Big Creek Ranger Station served as an administrative center for managing logging and firefighting in the remote North Fork of the Flathead River valley. Set aside for a ranger station in 1908, the site was surveyed in 1911, after the 1910 “Big Burn” invigorated the U.S. Forest Service’s commitment to fighting fire. A seasonal log house served as summer quarters for patrolmen during fire season. Conveniently located on the “main wagon road,” Big Creek saw further development in 1917-18. USFS replaced these early buildings between 1927 and 1942, developing the complex according to a 1931 site plan that followed region-wide patterns. After creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, Big Creek housed seasonal CCC workers, who made many improvements, including constructing new buildings following simple, pattern-book designs. These designs reflected the agency’s practical rustic aesthetic, a utilitarian emphasis on rural self-sufficiency, and Craftsman style detailing. The 1960s saw the creation of Interagency Fire Suppression crews, including one that based its seasonal fire camp at Big Creek. USFS relocated a second bunkhouse from the Coram Ranger Station to house these expanded crews and built three new buildings. The Big Creek Work Center, as it became known, operated for two decades, until firefighting centers in Boise and elsewhere eclipsed the need for remote stations like Big Creek. During the 1980s, the Big Creek firefighting center and ranger station closed. The buildings went unused until 1989, when the forest service authorized the Glacier Institute to house educational programs for young people.
]]>A torturous journey by covered wagon brought Frank and Ella Wurtz to this remote homestead in 1914. By 1917, the family included three children, so Frank built a larger cabin, reusing the logs of their first one-room dwelling. Proving a claim in the North Fork was a formidable task, and Frank did his best to clear and cultivate the required acreage. Even so, the Forest Service challenged the Wurtz claim in 1918, charging that not enough land had been cultivated. The protest was withdrawn, however, in 1919. A few months later, an arson fire consumed the family’s newly finished third cabin. Evidence suggested that the fire was a cover-up for the abduction of four-year-old Marie and two-year-old Harold; no trace of them was ever found. As the family dealt with this tragedy, title to the land was granted in 1920. Frank began to build the main house, but grief was hard to overcome; Frank, Ella, and nine-year-old Louise left the North Fork in 1922. A decade later, Frank and Ella returned with three children born in the interim. Frank then completed the log house and continued to improve the property until his failing health forced its sale in 1964. Today, the sturdy Wurtz cabin and house, representative of two building phases, are a lesson in perseverance and a tribute to the hardy North Fork settlers who carved homes out of the wilderness. Upon the transfer of ownership to the Forest Service in 1990, the Wurtz grandchildren wrote: “This land has been good to our family. The homestead was a labor of love, and it is with great love and respect that we now leave it.”
]]>Rugged outdoorsman and adventurist Andrew Vance came to Montana from Iowa in 1880 and found work in the Yellowstone Valley hunting buffalo to feed Northern Pacific Railroad crews. In the ensuing decades, Andy guided Yellowstone Park visitors and followed the Yukon Territory gold rushes. In 1914, Andy, his wife Ella, and daughters Maud and May staked a 160-acre homestead claim here among the aspen groves and meadows near the North Fork of the Flathead River. Andy worked trail crew in Glacier Park, ran a saw mill, and hunted and trapped for food, while Ella kept an extensive garden. In 1920, Andy began building a two-story lodge constructed of square notched logs, which replaced their original homestead cabin. Ben Hensen Jr. scored all the logs, Jack Reuter hewed the timbers, and McBlair did the finish work. The lodge comfortably accommodated family as well as guests whom Andy packed into the wilds of northern Montana and Canada. The remote North Fork community was centered in the hearts and homes of its scattered residents, and soon Vance Lodge became a regular host to social gatherings. Andy died in 1924 after he was hit by a train near Belton, and Ella died in 1929, but their home remained at the heart of the community. Daughter May married Ben Hensen Sr., who became postmaster, and the lodge served as post office for a time during the 1930s. Since, 1937, it has been a seasonal home to members of the Hensen family, who are still very much a part of the North Fork community. Miraculously unscathed during the devastating 1988 forest fires, Vance Lodge is a fitting tribute to the exceptional skills of its builder and a place of good luck and friendship to his descendants.
]]>Remote wilderness where a man could live by his own rules drew Bill Adair to northwestern Montana in 1904. He and his wife, Jessie, built a log mercantile on the east side of the North Fork of the Flathead River, supplying goods to the few settlers in the sparsely populated area. When the designation of Glacier National Park in 1910 eliminated homesteading on that side of the river, Adair saw that his future lay across the river where homesteaders continued to settle. Choosing a spot with exceptional fishing nearby, Adair filed a land claim in 1912 and built this cabin of square-notched, unhewn peeled logs. The false-fronted mercantile was completed in 1914. Adair's holdings, maintained with Jessie's help, and later that of second wife Emma, reflected a self-sufficient lifestyle. By 1917 the property included twenty-two acres planted in hay, potatoes, timothy grass, and garden vegetables, four work horses, one hundred chickens, and a milk cow. From 1913 to 1920, Adair's was the only general store in the North Fork region and a favored spot for social events. By 1922 more than 150 homesteads dotted the fifty-mile stretch of valley bottom, but the area never became heavily populated. Even today the Polebridge Mercantile continues to serve its few North Fork residents, while this splendid, unspoiled environment remains largely undiscovered by tourists.
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