“There
was nothing to do, but just keep going”
By
Jill Evans, Administrator of the Stumptown Historical
Society
It is difficult to imagine the level of difficult
challenge that early pioneers faced. I could not
describe the experience of just getting here better than
one of our first loggers did.
“W.O. Hutchinson described his own
fairly typical journey from Michigan to Whitefish
Lake……I arrived at Whitefish Lake on November 14, 1890.
My brother Joe had been here two months. I left my old
hoe in Michigan on November 6. I went north to Mackinaw
Strait, from there to Duluth and Minneapolis, from there
I took a Northern Pacific train to Ravalli, which is
about 35 miles south of Flathead Lake, and it took five
days to make the trip.
 “At
Ravalli I bought a stage ticket to the foot of Flathead
Lake, There were five stages leaving that morning but
they were so heavily loaded that several us had to walk.
The first day we traveled to the present day of Ronan,
there were no beds so we were forced to sit up all
night. During the night it snowed about twelve inches,
with sleighs replacing the stages. At noon we reached
the foot of Flathead Lake where Polson is now and took a
steamboat to Demersville. (4 miles SE of Kalispell).
The next morning I got up early and started afoot for
Whitefish Lake, carrying a heavy suitcase and a rifle.
There was no snow until I got to the timber line, about
five miles south of whitefish. It was said to be
twenty-five miles from Deversville to Whitefish Lake and
people had already begun to settle along the road. When
I arrived at the Henry Good ranch I took a wrong turn
and came north. I then followed a trail through the
woods towards Whitefish. After walking about a mile and
a half I came upon three men building a log cabin in a
meadow. One of then was A.N. Smith, later county
commissioner of Columbia Falls. He told me that it was
about a mile an a half to the trail to Whitefish Lake. I
made two attempts, but both times came out to the
Whitefish River, so I went back to where they were
building the cabin and Mr. Smith showed me over to the
lake read. I was surely warm and tired when I got there,
as I had then walked twenty-five miles. It was sundown,
and I was still three and a half miles from the lake:
however there was nothing to do except keep going.
The trail passed a small log cabin with some hay in it.
I thought for a few minutes that I would camp there for
the night, but on second thought I decided to go on and
see what I could find. I had gone only forty rods when I
found my brother and two other men working on his cabin,
about a half mile south of the Lake. I was then dark, so
we came down to the lake to a cabin where John Morton
lived. He was the first to locate in the Whitefish Lade
country, having built his cabin just west of the outlet
of the lake. He was from Michigan, not far from where we
had lived, and I had known him there.
“I was pretty tired from my long hike and slept well
that nite. When I got up the next morning, the sun was
coming up over the mountains by the canyon making the
peaks of the Whitefish Range a beautiful red. There was
a dead swell three feet high rolling down the Lake. I
went out and sat on the shore of the lake, admiring the
scenery for two hours. Never had I seen anything so
beautiful.”
It is men like this upon whose shoulders we stand and to
whom we owe a debt of gratitude. They had the courage to
go into the wilderness to forge a future for themselves
and create the beautiful town of Whitefish for all of
us.
Note:
The quoted material is taken from
Stump Town to Ski Town, by Betty Schafer and
Mable Engelter, written in 1972 and reprinted by the
Stumptown Historical Society in 2003. It is available
for sale in the Whitefish Museum located in the Train
Depot. |
