Historic Wheeler property goes to the Park

It’s been nearly a century since one of Montana’s most colorful political figures came to Glacier National Park and established a summer residence on Lake McDonald.

But now, abiding with a deal struck long ago, descendants of Sen. Burton K. Wheeler are leaving their inholding at the north end of the lake, including a cabin on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We are very sad to be leaving our family compound on Lake McDonald,” granddaughter Frederica Wheeler-Johnson told the Hungry Horse News. “I have 71 years of happy memories of summers spent there. I learned to swim, fish, boat and ride horseback during my time there. I also got to spend time with family members, my father Edward’s five brothers and sisters, plus my 15 first cousins. I also developed close friendships with the neighbors which endure to this day.”

Historic figure

Burton Kendall Wheeler served as a U.S. Senator from 1923 to 1947. A left-wing Democrat with support from Montana’s labor unions, Wheeler ran for vice president in 1924 on the Progressive Party ticket headed by Wisconsin Republican Robert LaFollette Sr.

Raised in Massachusetts, Wheeler graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1905 and was headed to Seattle when he reportedly got off the train in Butte, lost his belongings in a poker game and ended up practicing law there.

With philosophies shaped by his Quaker roots, Wheeler took on damage claims against Butte mining companies and railroads, and he defended a train robber, a safe blower, Butte madams and various union members.

Wheeler won election to the Montana Legislature in 1910 and stood up for labor against the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. He served as a U.S. Attorney before running for governor in 1920. He lost to Republican Joseph Dixon and then ran successfully for the U.S. Senate in 1922.

Wheeler’s political positions helped establish his place in history — backing the New Deal then breaking with President Roosevelt over the Supreme Court-packing case, and supporting the anti-war America First Committee until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

“The only thing now is to do our best to lick hell out of them,” he said once war was declared.

Susan Wheeler, of San Francisco, who spent a lot of time at Lake McDonald with her grandfather, said the Senator’s isolationist position developed during his time in Butte. She said her grandfather was concerned about actions by the Anaconda Company and the public hysteria against Germans during World War I.

“He was as much concerned about the destruction of war abroad as here at home,” she said.

After losing re-election in 1946, Wheeler took up his law practice in Washington, D.C. Later, with assistance from his daughter Frances and writer Paul F. Healy, Wheeler wrote his autobiography, “Yankee from the West.”

In 2004, journalist Bill Kauffman described the politician nicknamed “Bolshevik Burt” as an “anti-draft, anti-war, anti-big business defender of civil liberties.” Wheeler’s papers are kept at the Burton K. Wheeler Center for Public Policy in Bozeman. The Burton K. Wheeler House in Butte, where he ran his early law practice, is now the smallest National Historic Landmark in Montana.

Glacier Park

Wheeler first visited Lake McDonald with his wife Lulu in 1915. They leased land and purchased a cabin in Glacier Park the next year.

“In 1915, grandmother and grandfather Wheeler traded a property that they owned in Apgar for the one at the head of Lake McDonald,” Wheeler-Johnson said. “Part of the deal was that the land would go back to the Park after the last of their six children died. That happened this June with the death of Dad’s youngest sister, Marion Wheeler Scott, at 89 years of age. We must vacate our Lake McDonald property at the end of this summer.”

According to her obituary, Scott, who died June 7 after a brief illness, spent all but one summer of her life at the family cabins in Glacier Park, horseback riding, fly fishing, sailing, hiking and gardening.

Susan Wheeler said logs used to build the original cabin were floated across the lake from Apgar because there was no road yet along Lake McDonald. Water was supplied by a pipe run down from a creek on the side of Mount Stanton, and a generator was used before electricity was finally run to the property. Two horses for rides out to Trout Lake were kept in a corral north of the property across the road. She also said the boat house at the property is the oldest boat house still standing on the shore of the lake.

Sen. Wheeler vacationed often at the lake, but he continued his work as a senator. It was on the lake that he drafted legislation establishing self-rule on Indian reservations and regulating public utilities.

“Grandfather would stay at our cabins on Lake McDonald during the Senate’s summer recess,” Wheeler-Johnson said. “He conducted much legislative business right there in his living room with a view of the lake. I remember to this day delegations of Blackfeet Indians coming to the cabin in full regalia to meet with grandfather. Grandfather was very sympathetic to the causes of the Blackfeet Indians and advocated for them when he was in the Senate as well as afterwards when he continued his law practice in Washington.”

Wheeler was also a staunch Glacier Park supporter. He helped secure funding for construction of the Going-to-the-Sun Road and addressed the crowd at the alpine highway’s dedication on Logan Pass on July 15, 1933.

He also opposed construction of the Glacier View Dam, which would have flooded the North Fork Valley all the way to the Canada border. The $95 million dam was supported by Rep. Mike Mansfield and Flathead Valley interests but was opposed by local ranchers, the National Park Service, Glacier Park Hotel Company, Sierra Club, Society of American Foresters and Audubon Society.

The Wheeler family’s first cabin on Lake McDonald burned in 1941, and Lulu went to work designing a replacement and supervising construction the following year. According to a National Register of Historic Places sign at the property, “Using local materials, she emphasized the importance of privacy, quality of view and natural environment to reflect an unpretentious ‘democratic’ lifestyle.”

New home

The Wheeler family expects to be out of the historic inholding by the end of the summer. Not wanting to leave the area, Wheeler-Johnson bought a lot in the Whirry’s Wild River subdivision in West Glacier two years ago with plans to build a home there when she ran into a snag.

Wheeler-Johnson had made arrangements through Gregg’s Homes in Kalispell to have a modular home constructed and placed on a permanent foundation, but her immediate neighbors didn’t like the idea. Seventeen people representing 11 properties signed an Aug. 18 letter saying her proposed home was a mobile home, which is prohibited under the subdivision’s covenants.

In an earlier Aug. 1 opinion, however, Brian Murphy, a Helena attorney who represents the Montana Manufactured Housing & RV Association, explained the differences between modular homes and mobile homes in terms of construction standards, mobility, tax regulations and appearance. He also cited legal precedents.

“I have identified no Montana case where a covenant or restriction for mobile homes was held to restrict the erection of a modular home,” Murphy said.

Wheeler-Johnson said she’s already paid money to the company that would manufacture her new home. All told, she estimates the land and home will cost about half a million dollars. She defends modular homes, saying they’re becoming more common and accepted now, but she wasn’t sure what her next step would be.

“Modular homes are a quality, lower-cost alternative to site-built homes. They represent the future in home building,” Wheeler-Johnson said. “My husband and I have lived in our modular home at the beach in Maryland for 14 years and have been very pleased with it.”