The Timber Economy: When the Flathead Ran on Sawdust

Before cherries, before tourism, before ski towns, the Flathead Valley ran on timber. The forests covering the valley walls and the surrounding mountains were among the largest remaining stands of commercially valuable timber in the American West by the time the railroad arrived in eighteen ninety-one. The first water-powered sawmill appeared in eighteen eighty-four at Foys Lake, just outside present-day Kalispell.

By the turn of the twentieth century, larger investors had arrived. Anaconda Copper built a mill east of Kalispell in eighteen ninety-three, feeding timber to its smelter operations at Great Falls. James J. Hill himself partnered with a local businessman to float railroad ties down to the Great Northern. By nineteen ten, the Somers Lumber Company mill on the north shore of Flathead Lake was cutting thirty million board feet a year, the largest operation in the valley. At its mid-century peak, at least nine sawmills operated in the Flathead. Today two remain. F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber, founded in the early nineteen hundreds, is the oldest family-owned lumber company in Montana and still mills timber east of Kalispell.