Lake McDonald Lodge celebrates centennial

In the summer of 1971, Jan Metzmaker worked at the Lake McDonald Lodge as a maid. She started out at $1 an hour and got a 10-cent an hour raise later that summer. On top of that, she paid $85 a month for room and board.

But maids started work at 7 a.m. were typically done by noon. That gave them the rest of the day to do as they pleased.

“It was the most fun I ever had,” Metzmaker recalled. “An absolute riot. We hiked and hitchhiked everywhere.”

Metzmaker, a well-known Flathead Valley conservationist, was just one of dozens of folks who braved wretched weather June 14 to celebrate the lodge’s 100th anniversary.

Celebrants got free Red Bus rides from the Apgar Visitor Center to the lodge, and historians Ray Djuff and Deirdre Shaw led historic walking tours of the lodge in the pouring rain.

The current lodge wasn’t the first building at the site on the east shore of Lake McDonald. George Snyder built a hotel there in 1895 that was later bought by Olive and John E. Lewis of Columbia Falls in 1906.

Lewis was also part-owner of the Gaylord Hotel in Columbia Falls. The Lewises later competed with lodges built by the Great Northern Railroad, and in 1913 they tore down the Snyder Hotel and started work on the Lake McDonald Lodge.

The new hotel opened to visitors on June 14, 1914. Getting there wasn’t as simple as it is today — there was no Going-to-the-Sun Road, just a horse trail to the site, so most visitors arrived by steamboat from Apgar Village.

The Lewises were locals, and every opening and closing was also a community party.

“The opening was almost the premier event of season,” Djuff explained.

The menu featured mountain goat, venison, elk and moose.

“Come look at the animals — and taste them, too,” Djuff quipped.

The “front” of the hotel faced the lake, as most people arrived by boat. The Sun Road didn’t provide access until the early 1920s.

The Great Northern Railway acquired the hotel through its subsidiary, the Glacier Park Hotel Company, in 1930. The hotel’s name was changed to Lake McDonald Lodge in 1957, and eventually it became National Park Service property.

The lodge was extensively remodeled in 1988-89, making the rear look more like the front. Since then, the lodge has gone through some maintenance work but is largely intact, and it’s a popular stop for visitors. A boat tour concession operates at the dock, but there’s no longer service to Apgar.