Recalling early days of Park, Sun Road

By RICHARD HANNERS / For the Hungry Horse News

Margaret Cooper wasn't at the 1933 dedication ceremony of Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road. She was probably too busy tending the Clack family camp at the head of Lake McDonald.

She did head up to Logan Pass the next year with Sen. Burton K. Wheeler's son, Edward, to see President Franklin Roosevelt.

"I took a wonderful picture of the president in his touring car," Cooper said. "It's a better photo than the one in the history books, but I can't seem to find it."

The same 1927 open-top Cadillac that hauled Roosevelt from Belton to Logan Pass now resides in Whitefish resident Dale Duff's garage. He bought it at the Ford Bovey auction in 2000.

About 4,000 people gathered at Logan Pass for the Sun Road dedication in 1933, but deep snow has forced this year's 75th anniversary celebration to be held in the auditorium at Lake McDonald Lodge. Cooper plans to attend.

"That's where we used to go to church," she recalled.

The Clack family first started calling Glacier Park their summer home in 1926 when they rented a place at Apgar. The family's home was in Havre, and her father owned about 100 gas stations across the Northwest under the name H. Earl Clack Co., including one in Whitefish and two in Kalispell. The one by the current fairgrounds was the first truckstop in the Flathead.

But it was her mother Margaret's asthma that drove the family's decision to leave the Hi-Line in summertime. Renting a place in Apgar, however, was not a long-term solution — the 1929 Half Moon Fire changed all that.

Thought to be started by sparks from a donkey engine at State Lumber's Camp 4, north of where the Blue Moon Saloon is now, the fire eventually roared up and over Teakettle Mountain all the way through the Canyon and across Lake Five to Apgar, leaving behind thousands of acres of burnt-out cedar stumps.

"We were the last car out," Cooper recalled. "A burning tree fell behind the car and barely missed us. Mother didn't want to return after that."

The Clacks stayed the next summer in Idaho and then found a place at the head of Lake McDonald near the ranger station. A house belonging to Sen. Thomas Walsh's brother was for sale, and Cooper's father bought it. Those were tough times, as the Depression was just getting started.

Cooper's father fixed up the trapper's cabin and made a lot of improvements. With all the family members showing up from across the U.S., her father built a second cabin in 1940 that is called "the nursery."

"So many people came, Ed Wheeler said he didn't need to count sheep to fall asleep — he could just count the Clacks," Cooper said.

Her father also built a gravity-fed water system that ran water from a spring into a large holding tank. Water in a smaller tank near the cabin was heated by pipes connected to the wood cook stove inside the cabin.

"We had the first bathtub on the lake," Cooper said. "And we had hot water."

In those days, garbage went into a six-by-10 pit with a wooden cover and a ladder-like ramp going to the bottom. Her son, Turner Askew, recalled seeing a bear in there one time as he performed his chores.

"We didn't mind the bears so much," Cooper said. "We thought of them as large dogs."

Her daughter, Margaret Askew, recalled the time a bear got into the pantry and made off with a one-gallon jar of mayonnaise. The glass jar was later found on the porch — empty but unbroken.

Cooper recalled hiking all over Glacier Park, including trips to Sperry Chalet and from The Loop on the Sun Road up and over Swiftcurrent Pass to Many Glacier. Often horses carried supplies on these long trips, but she and her family hiked.

"I learned to speed hike at Montana State University," Cooper said. "I took it for granted. So when I took some visiting boys to Avalanche Lake and they were so pokey, my sister and I couldn't hold back."

She said she gave up fishing after landing a big bull trout and learned she had to unhook the fish and gut it.

Over the years, Cooper met some local celebrities, including Flathead-artist Ace Powell and East Glacier-artist J.L. Clarke. A famous Ansel Adams photograph was taken from the Clacks' beach and includes their little rowboat.

Cooper often stopped at the Hungry Horse News office to see Mel Ruder on her way to buy groceries.

"He was an artist," Cooper said. "My brother-in-law once met the editor of the Christian Science Monitor. When he was asked what his favorite newspaper was, he said it was the Hungry Horse News."

After 60 years of tending the lake, Cooper now has a nice home in Suncrest, in Whitefish. More than 100 people now share the inholding at the head of the lake, and a committee of six representing the six families organizes an elaborate calendar to schedule visits.

"Our Web site is done by a relative in Paris, France," Cooper said.