Xanterra buys RV campground site

After 24 years in the RV campground business, Dee and Steve Brown are looking forward to doing something different.

“We bought an RV and we’re going out on the road,” Dee said.

In a deal that closed April 2, the Browns sold their Canyon RV property to Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the company that this year took over the main lodging and red bus concession in Glacier National Park.

The couple purchased the property in Coram between U.S. 2 and the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in 1993. It was approved for 71 sites, but they typically only used 56, Steve said.

Dee retired from teaching at Canyon Elementary School in 1998, and Steve retired from the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. in 2001.

“It was a big success overall,” Steve said. “But it was tough in the early years, working at two jobs.”

Dee recalled making a mortgage payment on the property one time with a credit card. Steve recalled all the hard work put in carving a campground out of virgin woods and establishing a well-known and respected business.

“Over the years, people found out about us and kept coming back,” Dee said.

She noted that their campground hosts, Ben and Barbara McCurdy, received top honors from Workamper News, an online site representing campground hosts across the country.

Canyon RV was also known for its wonderful landscaping and flowers.

“I’ll actually miss that part,” Dee said, “but the new owners said I can come by and clean the flower garden each spring.”

Dee said they had the campground on the market for about a year and expected a prospective buyer would be unique.

“The property has river frontage, highway frontage and infrastructure,” she said. “When we heard that Xanterra was looking for properties in the area, we asked a Realtor to offer them an exclusive opportunity.”

For the first time in many years, Steve plowed the campground’s roads in January so a team of Xanterra executives could tour the property. That started the negotiations.

“They really liked what they saw,” Dee said. “Marc Ducharme, Glacier Division’s general manager, said, ‘This will be the best employee campus in our system.’”

The Browns note that they didn’t sell the Canyon RV business, just the property, and they expect Xanterra will use the property for employee housing — not the public.

The 56 RV sites removed from the local market will likely be replaced by expansion projects at the Columbia Falls RV Park in Columbia Falls and the KOA Campground in West Glacier, and by a new RV campground proposed for Columbia Heights.

“More and more people are discovering what a beautiful place we have here,” Dee said.

“The number of people visiting here goes up each year,” Steve said.

The Browns are looking forward to traveling in their new RV. They want to start off in Montana with a visit to the Bucking Horse Sale in Miles City in May and a float on the Smith River this summer.

“We worked 24/7 every summer for a long time,” Dee said. “This will be the first time in 24 years that we will be the tourists and not looking out for them.”