Pioneer George S. Watkins arrived in Montana in 1864. The "cattle king of Madison County" ultimately acquired thousands of acres, including much of the Madison basin. Here he built a summer cow camp with two large cabins, a barn, and a smokehouse (all extant) as well as extensive corrals and other outbuildings. The hugely successful rancher sold horses, cattle, and hay in Virginia City and later to concessionaires in Yellowstone National Park. He reduced his holdings in 1898, when the Madison Dam flooded his ranch near Ennis. When Madison Power and Light Company announced its plan to build Hebgen Dam in 1904, a disheartened Watkins sold out. Not all of the Watkins Creek Ranch ended up under water, however, and between 1906 and 1922 the un-flooded parcels were opened to homesteading. In 1944, Utahans Clarence “Clix” and Leila Wright—who had long vacationed in the area—purchased the ranch from homesteader William F. Martzel. With their daughter Anne and son-in-law K. Smith, the Wrights decided to open a dude ranch, hiring Snedaker and MacDonald Architects of Salt Lake City to construct a main lodge. The Rustic style lodge mimicked the original ranch buildings and evoked the rugged, frontier West through the use of native materials. As the dude ranch expanded, the Wrights carefully maintained the ranch's western atmosphere while offering the modern comforts their clients expected. Ranch visitors—including the daughter of Nelson Rockefeller, who constructed her own cabin on the property—enjoyed fishing, boating, herding cattle, trail rides, and trips to Yellowstone. The Wrights maintained the business until 1967.
]]>The Forest Service granted Jess Pierman a special-use permit to build a hotel and restaurant here in 1910. A large tent accommodated guests until the present hotel was under construction in the fall of 1912. Doll Bartlett began cooking for Pierman in 1910, saving much of her weekly ten-dollar paycheck. Her husband Roxy drove the stage between Monida and West Yellowstone. By the time the hotel was under construction, the Bartletts had saved enough money to buy the business, which they ran until Roxy died in the 1920s. Doll continued to run the hotel with her second husband, George Pickup. The two-story rectangular plan is of simple log construction with saddle-notched corner timbering and a prominent front dormer. The original six upstairs rooms, warmed by a cut stone fireplace in the downstairs lobby, catered to rail and stage travelers. Each room had a pitcher, a wash basin, and a chamber pot. Water came from a well across the street. The hotel expanded, adding fourteen rooms in 1921 and a bar and dance floor soon after, but there was no running water until the 1930s. In 1923, President Harding was a guest and antiquated registers show that many Hollywood greats, such as Wallace Beery and Gloria Swanson, enjoyed the hospitality of the Madison Hotel. Log support columns and beams, wood floors, light fixtures, the stone fireplace, and many of the room furnishings are original. Although not the first hotel in West Yellowstone, the Madison is the only hotel that remains from this early period when tourism was in its infancy.
]]>Louis J. Kennedy, forest ranger for the Madison Basin, obtained the first permit to operate a business on this choice commercial property in 1910. Some protested the propriety of his successful application since his mother-in-law also obtained a permit for the choice lot next door. Kennedy Hall was first used as a dance hall. Equipped with a piano, the building hosted Saturday night dances for the entertainment of tourists, railroad employees, and locals. It then housed a summer restaurant from 1913 to 1916, and in 1919, local students used its lofty space as a basketball court. Sam Eagle, one of the town’s founders, acquired the building in 1933 and opened a curio shop managed by his daughter, Rose. In 1941, Rose married Herm Menzel who promptly went off to war. Upon Herm’s return in 1946, the store became Menzel’s Curio Shop. The log building features sawn, half-log vertical siding of red fir decoratively placed on the front façade. Structural log columns two feet in diameter support a gabled projection over the sidewalk and entry. The heavy timbered, rustic storefront is an unusual treatment for commercial buildings in Montana. Original interior features include bead board siding, a pressed metal ceiling, and crown moldings. Crag and Kurt Menzel, Rose and Herm’s sons and grandsons of Sam Eagle, manage the shop today. One of the few remaining buildings associated with Yellowstone tourism in the 1910s, the Kennedy Building is also significant for its distinctive rustic architecture.
]]>When the tracks of the Oregon Short Line reached West Yellowstone in November 1907, Park employee Samuel P. Eagle applied for and was granted a permit to operate a business adjacent to the railway right-of-way. The Eagles, in partnership with the Alex Stuarts, built a tiny 12-by-12-foot general store on this site in 1908. It was the first commercial operation in West Yellowstone. The Eagles enlarged the store in 1913 and in 1927, the old store was razed and construction began on the present building. It was built in three stages and finished in 1930. Prominent Bozeman architect Fred Willson, who designed other structures in the same Rustic style within Yellowstone National Park, designed all three sections. Donating his time because of a desire to promote the Rustic style, Willson was reimbursed for direct costs only. Massive 18-to-36-foot red fir logs set in rhyolite and concrete support the building. Shingle siding and a roof of multicolored "T" lock asphalt shingles pierced by gabled dormers provide striking surface variation. All elements of the three sections are original. Outstanding interior features include the back bar installed in the original store in 1910 and the original 1930 front bar and stools. Millwork, tile, and white marble tops of both the customer counter and the back bar remain intact. Still a gift shop and soda fountain owned and managed by the Eagles, this impressive pioneer family business is one of West Yellowstone’s most outstanding architectural landmarks.
]]>Rail-based tourism added significantly to Montana’s economy at the turn of the century, with tourists spending $500,000 in the state each year from 1900 through 1910. The railroad-related buildings scattered near the entrance to Yellowstone Park serve as reminders that the town of West Yellowstone was born because of the railroad. This pylon rises from green grass speckled with wild parsley against a wooded backdrop, defining the eastern boundary of the historic district. Its construction and dedication in 1910 marked the completion of the railroad terminus and the beginning of development by the Union Pacific for the accommodation of tourists en route to the park. Two cement shields of the 1904-1912 Union Pacific logo are mounted on a base of randomly placed welded tuff. The same shield, borrowed in 1905 by the newly created U.S. Forest Service, still identifies that agency today. The West Yellowstone marker symbolizes tourism in its infancy, when railroad travel made the national parks more accessible to all.
]]>A group of adventurous fly fishermen from Salt Lake City began annual fishing trips in the 1890s, first camping near Henry’s Lake in Idaho and eventually traveling over Targhee Pass to the South Fork of the Madison River in Montana. Originally arriving by wagon and later by train, the “Lonesomehurst Group,” as they became known, set up their fishing camp on the South Fork. In 1916, the construction of Hebgen Dam inundated the South Fork and changed a most beautiful part of the Madison River forever. In 1919, John H. Horlick of the Lonesomehurst Group took advantage of the 1915 Term Occupancy Act allowing for recreational residences on forest lands. He received a special use permit and built a primitive fishing cabin along Hebgen Lake’s western shoreline. One of the oldest recreational cabins in the Gallatin National Forest, it has been held by just three families since its construction. Attorney Robert Mark purchased the cabin in 1931 and improved it considerably. David and Mary Bascom bought the cabin in 1956, three years before the 1959 earthquake caused the lake to recede 22 feet. David, under the name Milford Poltroon, published West Yellowstone’s famed “piscatorial periodical,” The Wretched Mess News. From primitive fishing cabin to “improved” summer home, the cabin today reflects the eclectic timelessness of a long used and well-loved retreat. Jan Dunbar (Horlick’s granddaughter) speaks eloquently of the cabin: “the history of a place like Lonesomehurst is so unlikely, the survival of that old cabin also unlikely, and the window it gives on a former world is indeed fascinating.”
]]>The railroad constructed a stone and wood generator house for a gas engine here in 1918. In 1927, that building was remodeled with a new roof, stone corners, and slab siding to blend with the Rustic style architecture of the new dining lodge next door. A diesel engine and generators replaced the gas engine in 1934. These, as well as the electric output control board, remain in place today. In 1941, the Fall River Rural Electric Coop purchased the diesel engine and generating capabilities, allowing twenty-four-hour electrical service to become available to the town for the first time. By 1947, Fall River had extended the power line to West Yellowstone from Idaho. The generating facilities then reverted back to railroad use and backup in case of emergencies.
]]>As tourism blossomed during the first decades of the twentieth century, the Union Pacific Railroad considered how to better accommodate travelers. Officials conceived the idea of building restaurants and pavilions architecturally similar to the monumental lodges being constructed in national parks. Acclaimed architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, whose mastery of the Rustic style set the standard for national park architecture, designed this splendid dining lodge for the Union Pacific. Completed in 1926, it was an intermediate project built while Underwood was designing the world-renowned Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park. The Rustic style of this lodge, its wood and welded tuff in grand harmony with the landscape, echoes that of the famed hotel. Featuring mammoth walk-in fireplaces, the multi-level interior is characteristic of Underwood’s designs. As part of a national collection of Underwood’s work, the lodge gains added significance as a rare surviving example of a railroad dining hall constructed to mimic park architecture.
]]>In 1905 Union Pacific officials began construction of a branch line in the pine-forested wilderness from Ashton, Idaho, to the western edge of Yellowstone Park. As the final tracks were laid in 1907, Samuel P. Eagle, Alex Stuart, Charles Arnet, and L. A. Murray applied for commercial leases, prompting the Forest Service to survey and plat a six-block townsite. Privately owned businesses prospered, serving crowds of Park tourists ferried back and forth from the railway by stagecoach. West Yellowstone became a thriving permanent settlement, dominated by the beautiful 1909 Union Pacific Depot. Designed by the Union Pacific Engineering Office, it combines Richardsonian Romanesque elements with rustic exposed wood and hood-like roofs. In 1925, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who was later noted for his imaginative resort designs and many passenger stations, drew the plans for a new dining lodge and employee dormitories. These creative designs explore the naturalistic Rustic style adopted by the National Park Service. Native rhyolite gathered along the railway line enhances the rustic appearance of foundations, walls, colossal chimneys, and massive fireplaces and complements the log construction. This collection of railroad buildings constructed between 1905 and 1927 has withstood severe weather, major fires, rebuilding, and expansion. The district stands today as a rare reminder of early Park tourism and a tribute to a fine architect.
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