Summer visit turns into 85-year Park stay

Jack Hoag sits on his porch and watches the waves of Lake McDonald and the hummingbirds in the flower garden with a broad smile on his face. You probably couldn’t ask for a nicer place to spend the summer, and at 97, Hoag has seen plenty.

He first came to Glacier National Park in 1927 with his mother. They were guests of Sen. Tom Walsh, who had a cabin at the head of the lake. Hoag’s mother was good friends and college classmates with Walsh’s daughter. At the time, the Going-to-the-Sun Road wasn’t complete, and they took a boat to get to the cabin.

Walsh took the young Hoag up to Snyder Lake to teach him to fly-fish.

“It was like a fishing hatchery up there,” Hoag recalled during an interview last week.

At the time, one could rent a horse, get a box lunch and have the help of a wrangler for $5.

Hoag fell in love with the Park and its miles of trails and fish-filled lakes. In 1937, he received a small inheritance from his grandfather and bought Frank Geduhn’s place.

Geduhn had died, and his wife Clarabelle wanted to sell the place and move to California. Geduhn first came to the Park in 1892, eventually settling at the head of the lake in a tiny cabin with one amenity — the outhouse is a small wing of the cabin.

Geduhn’s cabin still sits on Hoag’s property. It’s restored but no longer inhabited and used as a storage shed.

In those early summers on the lake, Jack met a girl named Regina who was younger but a bit of a pest. Her family had homesteaded in a sod house in Gildford and also took a liking to the Park. They had a summer home in the area, and Hoag was good friends with Regina’s brother.

When Regina grew up, she caught Jack’s eye. They’ve been married 63 years now. Regina became a distinguished doctor of pediatrics, teaching at Wayne State University Medical School. Jack graduated from the University of Michigan law school in 1940 and specialized in real estate.

They lived 50 years in Grosse Point, Mich., but their careers always allowed them to return to Lake McDonald for the summers, where Jack would go on long fishing trips to places like Trout and Howe lakes.

In the early years, a person could drive to Howe Lake, and Charlie Howes had a place where he raised hay. The same could be said for the Christensen and Rogers homesteads. Today, those homesteads are quiet places and the only way to get there is by foot.

Jack credits his wife for his longevity.

“She insisted I eat my broccoli,” Jack joked. “I’ve been suffering with that for decades. It seems to work.”

The couple has three grown children, Davey, John and Anne, and four grandchildren. Davey works with the Glacier Park fire crew, John is a Tibetan translator, and Anne teaches college math in Helena. The compound can get busy with friends and relatives.

And there are the Glacier Park hazards. A few days ago, a mountain lion attacked their little dog, Max, but he survived, saved by son John, who scared the cat off with a little yelling and some rocks. And, of course, the occasional bear wanders through.

Jack keeps a flower garden. When he wasn’t hiking, he loved tending the perennials. He’s fished much of the Park and notes that if you know where to go, McDonald Creek even has some good fishing.

But his favorite place was Trout Lake. Just over the ridge from the cabin, he’d leave the house at 5:30 a.m., be at the lake by 7:15 and fish until 11 a.m., when things slowed down.

Then it was time for a nap and the walk back home. Summer doesn’t get much better than that.