Bigfork golf developer Mike Felt passes away

Longtime Bigfork leader and developer Mike Felt passed away Nov. 19.

Felt was founder and developer of Eagle Bend Golf Club in Bigfork, which is now in its 30th year.

Felt and his wife, Patty, arrived in Bigfork in 1968 after starting a crop-insurance business in Great Falls, Mont. The business was doing well, and Felt had the resources to do something big in Bigfork. Felt envisioned a golf resort where a former dairy farm sat near the Flathead River on Holt Drive. “In the late 1970s, we were thinking Bigfork had so much going for it we thought let’s build a golf course here,” he said in an interview this summer.

Those were exciting times for Felt. He was fast developing Montana’s top golf course and Bigfork was getting attention as an emerging golf destination.

And here was a man from Great Falls who called himself a “sharecropper’s son,” and who was now rubbing elbows with the likes of Jack Nicklaus. Felt got to know Nicklaus, who dedicated Eagle Bend’s clubhouse in 1988. Felt had spent several days riding horses with Nicklaus on a backcountry elk hunt. “Those are things I never dreamed would have happened,” Felt said in a Bigfork Eagle interview in September. “I had no idea that guys like Jack Nicklaus were going to show up one day. Becoming a friend of his and his family was a rewarding experience, and that happened because of what we did here.”

In the 1980s, Eagle Bend was the first serious, large scale development in the Flathead Valley. While Felt had the vision to pursue the development, many locals were dead-set against it. “I remember one hearing in Kalispell that had 29 people attend, with 25 people speaking against it,” Felt said. “I thought, walking out of there, we’d never get this thing done. I had a vision, but people in the community didn’t see that vision. Some of the old-timers said ‘What are you doing to our sleepy little community?’”

Felt said he tried to understand the local opposition, and tried to meet their demands.  

“We tried to put ourselves in their shoes,” he said. “And at that time we didn’t have a lot of cooperation out of the planning office.”

In spite of setbacks along the way, Felt continued his drive to build a first-class golf course in Bigfork. “I’ve always had the reputation of being a persistent guy, and once I got started on a project I didn’t want to see it fail,” Felt said.

It was the decision to build another nine holes — and have Jack Nicklaus Jr. design it — that may have ultimately caused Felt to lose the course.

Felt put in the entire community infrastructure at once, such as roads, water and sewer. 

“When we got our first tax bill from the county,” Felt said,  “I thought ‘We did this wrong.’”

There came a time when Felt had to say enough is enough.

He walked away from the course after getting a phone call from one of the investors who suggested he step aside.

Felt looked back fondly this summer on his accomplishment. “Most people would agree that it was Eagle Bend that changed the culture of Bigfork,” Felt told the Bigfork Eagle. “I’m proud of what we did here. I wish we’d have done some things differently, but I’m very proud of this. I don’t regret any of it. I have the satisfaction of building a great project and I’m glad I did it.”