Students building new Glacier National Park housing; program heading into sixth year of success

A partnership between Glacier National Park and Columbia Falls High School students continues to pay dividends for both the Park Service and the students as it heads into its sixth year.

To date students in the building trades program have constructed a dozen structures for Glacier, including six cabins and other buildings, like entrance stations.

The entrance station on the Camas Road, for example, was built by students. The cabins are used for Park Service employee housing. This year, the class, taught by Bob Jellison a carpenter for the Park Service and Manolo Victor, industrial arts teacher at the high school, is building a two-bedroom employee housing cabin for Many Glacier and perhaps more impressively, they’re building a timber frame cabin that will house trail crews near Granite Park Chalet.

The timber frame building is actually too big for the shop, so the students, under the tutelage of Jellison and Victor, are carefully making it piecemeal a wall at a time.

It will then be hauled into the high country this summer for final assembly by Park Service crews. Granite Park is perched on the Continental Divide, about four miles east of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. There are no roads to it, only trails.

The classroom to park program, which Glacier adopted from similar programs in Alaska and other parks, was initially spearheaded by Jim Foster, facilities manager for Glacier.

The students, during a videoconference by the Glacier Park Conservancy last week, said the program has been a life changing experience.

“It’s awesome,” said senior Logan Oswald. “I’m learning valuable life skills. Stuff I wouldn’t learn anywhere else.”

The students learn all aspects of what amounts to home construction, from the floor to the roof to siding and everything in between, like plumbing and electrical.

The Many Glacier cabin, for example, has a full bathroom.

When finished this spring, it will be loaded onto a low boy trailer and hauled to Many Glacier. There, Park Service crews just have to hook up the utilities. The finished product is almost completely turnkey.

The Park Service also has a summer apprenticeship program, where a member of the class goes into the field and works side-by-side with Park Service carpenters restoring and repairing backcountry cabins and lookouts.

Student Otto Anderson participated in that last year and said it was a fabulous experience.

Mae Anderson is a graduate from the building trades class and is now almost through college. She said it was instrumental in her development.

“I didn’t really enjoy going to high school,” she said. “But I enjoyed that class.”

Today, Mae Anderson is considering a career in construction, but more from the business end than the hammer and nails side of it.

But the skills she learned certainly came in handy. She’s now living in a home built by herself and her boyfriend.

Students do get a leg up on college. The program offers dual credits for high school at Flathead Valley Community College and in addition, credit toward the state’s apprenticeship program.

Anderson was a pioneer in another regard, she was the first female to enroll in the program. Victor said girls are welcome, they have a good attention to detail.

“Mr. Victor has amazing,” Selah Heinzen, a girl enrolled in the class this year.

The program is funded by the National Park Foundation, the Glacier Conservancy and School District 6.