FROM STUMPTOWN TO SKI TOWN TO....?

What Makes Whitefish Special?

By Bill Schneider, 11-02-07

	Downtown Whitefish, photo by Travel Montana/Donnie Sexton. BELOW: Whitefish Lake, photo by Brian Schott.

When people come to Whitefish for the first time, they expect to find another resort town. After all, the northwestern Montana community of 7,500 people is nestled in the shadow of mighty Big Mountain, with the strikingly visible ski runs of world-renowned Whitefish Mountain Ski Resort serving as the town’s unofficial icon. And there’s more than a ski hill.

Whitefish also sits on the doorstep of Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, and Flathead Lake, the West’s largest body of fresh water, all surrounded by national forests, large lakes, wild rivers, and mountain scenery. The town even has its own lake, Whitefish Lake, a natural beauty.

But Whitefish is hardly your typical resort town. You won’t find that tourism trap persona with its yellow-and-red shops selling rubber tomahawks and personalized key chains and the usual garnishment of neon, strip malls and casinos. Instead, you find a quaint, charming, progressive community trying very hard not to be like every other town.

Everybody knows about the fabulous skiing up on Big Mountain, but that isn’t what makes Whitefish special. You don’t need to talk to many locals to find out what does and that most of them moved there because of it. Or you can just look around and see it--or not see it.

Downtown, you don’t see a lot of neon or casinos and might have a hard time wasting your money on a lottery ticket, but you can buy a screwdriver at Nelson’s Hardware or go aross the street to the Two Medicine Gallery and lay down $135,000 for a life-sized sculpture of a Kodiak bear and two cubs. You can get a great cup of jo at Montana Coffee Traders, but not at Starbucks because the Borg of the coffee universe hasn’t found Whitefish, yet.

You can get a piece of homemade huckleberry pie at Mrs. Spoonovers, but not a six-pack of tacos because there’s no Taco Bell. You can still buy a Bud Light at the Bulldog Saloon, but you can also get a growler of Bare Naked Amber and other testy microbrew a block away at the Great Northern Brewing Company. For fine dining, you have a choice of a dozen marvelous restaurants that wouldn’t be out of place in San Francisco, but you can also buy a great burger at the “grocery store” in the backroom of the Great Northern Bar & Grill. Insomniacs like me can get a hardy breakfast at The Red Caboose 24 hours a day, as long as I take my snowshoes off first, and people who actually sleep at night can go to a half-dozen more great breakfast cafes, including the most famous, the Buffalo.

You don’t see parking meters or chain stores downtown, but you walk a block down to the depot and catch the Empire Builder to Seattle after checking out museum next door run by the Stumptown Historical Society or catch up with your performing arts at the O’Shaughnessy Center or walk over to Marcus Foods, a European-style grocery store (i.e. you walk not drive to it) that you don’t find in many downtowns any more or check out one of the three bicycle shops.

And that’s just downtown. Around town, you still see minimal neon, only a few chain stores, and no big boxes. There is a McDonald’s; there always is, but it has a scaled down, earth-tone design with tiny arches hugging the ground instead of jutting skyward.

Coming into town, you don’t see ugly strip malls with seas of asphalt running out to the curb. You do see bikeways and landscaping cushioning the space between U.S. Highway 93 and the businesses.

We all like wildlife, of course, and Whitefish does not disappoint. Joining the normal urban deer herd most cities enjoy or loathe, you see turkeys and ring-necked pheasants running around town. You probably won’t see one, but even the Big Kahuna, the majestic grizzly bear, occasionally comes into town and roams the streets at night. I suppose the visitor’s bureau doesn’t put out press releases about it, but from my perspective, if you have a community natural enough and close enough to wild land to have grizzlies visiting town, even if it’s for the wrong reason (i.e. for apples or pet food), you live in a very special place.

Perhaps most of all, there’s Whitefish Lake, a huge (3,315 acres), still-clear, natural lake right in the city limits. In the summer, the lake is abuzz with Wave Runners and water skiers, but in the spring and fall, when I go there, you can have it all to yourself. I’ve been out there catching lake trout and northern pike over the past two weeks, often the only boat on the lake. One day I watched a mature bald eagle plucking coots off the glassy surface and flying over to a shoreline cottonwood to enjoy its meals, even though the tree was in somebody’s front yard. You don’t see that in many towns.

Most of the shoreline is lined with massive trophy homes, some with the rail line fifty feet from the back door. Go figure that one--building a dream home worth millions almost on the main line with trains whistling through every thirty minutes and feeling like 5.2 on the Richter Scale? But that’s Whitefish.

The community had the foresight long ago to buy a public access point and boat launch, City Beach, right in town. (Recently, though, in what could be lack of foresight, voters turned down a $3 million bond issue to buy nearby land and add it to City Beach.) The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks has another access point and boat ramp, Whitefish Lake State Park, on the edge of town. So, even though the high-net-worthers rule most of the lakeshore, everybody can enjoy beautiful Whitefish Lake.

One thing you don’t see is the attitude of the people living here, but you can feel it, and it’s definitely one thing that makes the town special. At least that’s what mayor Cris Coughlin believes.

“A lot of what keeps Whitefish special is the high level of community involvement,” she is quick to say. “We have real people, and I think that makes a big difference.”

To support her belief, the mayor points to the many “private-public partnerships” such as new soccer fields for kids (called Project Whitefish Kids), The Wave fitness center, Whitefish Public Library and the O’Shaughnessy Center. In each of the above, and others, the community raised money from private sources and donated thousands of hours of volunteer time to make their town a little more special.

And then there is what Coughlin calls “the ultimate granddaddy of them all,” A Trail Runs Through It, a massive proposal involving county, state and federal agencies nonprofits, and several private landowners, to build a recreational trail around Whitefish. (Click here for a companion article on the trail.)

Having an engaged citizenry might be the key to keeping any place special, and it appears to be working in Whitefish, especially when combined inherit physical beauty.

“When I came here in 1971 from back east,” Jan Metzmaker, director of the Whitefish Visitor Bureau, recalls. “I was enthralled with the place and I still am. It’s evolved into a town with an incredible number of amenities that make it a very desirable place to live or locate your business.”

Traditionally known as Stumptown when railroaders and loggers deforested the slopes around town, Whitefish evolved into a ski town when the resort opened and second growth reclaimed the viewshed. Now, under the pressure of rapid growth facing most communities in the New West, city leaders aren’t sure Whitefish should even be called a resort town. Instead, the left-leaning, highly engaged community is evolving into something else, but into what?

“How to we keep Whitefish from becoming a community of second home owners like Aspen,” asks mayor Coughlin. “We’re probably 20 or 30 years behind Aspen, which is struggling right now. It’s booming there for three months, but dead for nine months, with no kids in the schools, nobody in the restaurants and other businesses.”

Preventing this from happening will be a challenge because many people now moving to Whitefish--or more likely to near Whitefish--are not permanent residents. In fact, to be clear, Whitefish and Near Whitefish are two completely different communities--and often at odds over growth and development issues. Some real estate developers and longtime landowners waiting for their subdivision ship to come in frequently protest city policies and ordinances affecting growth, even calling the town “The People’s Republic of Whitefish.”

A good example of this is Iron Horse Estates, an ultra-ritzy, exclusive community recently developed on the slopes above town. “When Iron Horse came in a few years ago,” recalls city councilwoman Nancy Woodruff, “People had to fight hard to keep Iron Horse from becoming a gated community and keep those streets open.”

And won. You can now take a scenic drive or bike ride up Iron Horse Drive without owning a house there worth more than the GNP of a third-world country.

“We don’t want the exclusivity image,” Woodruff says firmly. “We want to remain an integrated community..”

“Our city policies make Whitefish a special place, but the temptations are always there to make Whitefish like every other place,” admits Metzmaker, who is temporarily filling an open slot on the city council.

Exactly what policies make the difference? What specifically have city leaders done to keep Whitefish special? That’s the subject of the second in this two-part article, which I’ll post on Monday, November 5.

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