San-Suz-Ed: Like going to grandma's house

Visiting the San-Suz-Ed RV Park Campground and Bed and Breakfast is like stepping back in time. The large office has display after display of curios, antiques and items from years gone by — a 3-gallon coffee pot, a Hershey’s candy box advertising 10-cent chocolates, a waffle iron, dozens of old watches, china and glassware, and a scrapbook of businesses that have been in the Canyon and West Glacier area over the past 50 years.

It’s not just a campground — it’s home for Catherine Richter. She’s run the place for the past half-century, getting up at 6:30 a.m. everyday to make guests breakfast, going to bed about 11 p.m. or midnight — sometimes later if a guest arrives with a big rig and needs help parking.

Richter grew up a farm girl near Deer Lodge and moved here with her husband Quintin in 1960. He was a construction worker and they were building a new bridge over McDonald Creek in Glacier National Park.

In 1964, at the urging of friends Tom and Doty Ridenour, the couple bought seven acres of land off U.S. 2 and started a campground. When the 1964 Flood hit that June, they had eight spaces. By the end of summer, they’d expanded to 25 to accommodate construction personnel repairing flood damage across the Flathead.

The campground’s name comes from their children’s names — Sandy, Susen and Edward. Quintin died a few years ago, but Catherine is still going strong.

The campground made money but wasn’t the couple’s sole source of income — for many years Quintin was a carpenter and Catherine cooked and a baked in area restaurants. One year she was a fishmonger.

“I was Caty The Fish Lady,” she said.

In 1974, Richter bought a brand new Dodge pickup, put a freezer in back and started buying and selling fish from suppliers in Ronan and elsewhere. She sold fish to restaurants and other businesses both in and out of Glacier Park. By the end of the summer, she had the note on the new truck paid off.

At one time the campground had 18 head of horses and offered trail rides.

“Back then you could go anyplace,” Richter said. “No one had fenced their property.”

She organized a 4-H group, and the kids were the first to come up with a plan for a hiking and horse path from the Canyon to Glacier Park. The idea was shot down after a Canyon resident objected to expanding the highway and sued in federal court. But the path will soon be a reality, with construction set to begin next year.

Richter also organized a sheriff’s posse for youths and was active in school issues over the years.

“I raised hell at school board meetings many times,” she said. “They wanted to get rid of our schools, and I wouldn’t let them.”

Rural schools in Hungry Horse and Coram have since shut down. Richter also lobbies the Park Service whenever she can. She says Glacier Park could open the Going-to-the-Sun Road in a more timely fashion and do a better job grading the roads to Kintla and Bowman lakes.

She’d also like to see more daytime interpretative programs. Many campers today are older and don’t like to drive in the dark, she said.

“There’s no reason they can’t have programs during the day — morning and afternoon,” she said.

Camping habits have changed, she notes. Guests used to pull in with a truck and a unit and that was it. Today, many campers are homes on wheels, complete with microwaves, dishwashers, televisions and computers.

Some guests hardly even come outside, she said. A big crowd used to gather every evening at the camp fire, drinking three full pots of coffee. Now only a few guests show up, she said. People would rather watch TV or their computers.

Richter is well-known for her pie baking. Her favorites include avocado, buttermilk custard and pineapple sour cream. Huckleberry is a standard fare. She uses no other fruit and no other fillers. Just hucks.

“People say it’s different than other huckleberry pies,” she said. “That’s why.”