They say the only constant is change. While that's certainly true in regards to our treasure state as a whole, there are few places that time hasn’t quite touched. One being Flathead Lake Lodge. Guests are not of the one-and-done variety. They return, most often year after year, for the feeling the Lodge offers—the furniture in the Main Lodge dated to 1932, the log pool furniture, and, believe it or not, the smell.
“Everyone comes back—maybe they haven’t visited in 20, 30 years—and the first thing they all mention is that the main lodge smells the same,” says Chase Averill, the third generation general manager. To be celebrating 80 years of business, in today’s world nonetheless, is a feat that not many know the sweetest of. So much gets washed away or lost in the hustle of progress but Chase comments on how the Lodge has withstood the test of time, and miraculously (perhaps magically) remained unchanged through eight decades. With a long lineage of hospitality at the helm, Chase reflects on how his family—mainly his father Doug and grandfather Les—have paved the road for this way of life to persevere despite all that’s come to Montana over the years.
“My dad has stories as a kid—a lot of the highways that are around now being dirt roads, and I think back in the 40s, supposedly Les had an old Dodge Power Wagon and he and one other guy had the only four wheel drive vehicles in the whole town of Big Fork,” says Chase. “Originally, the place started as more of a hunting and fishing lodge and, you know, kind of morphed into a dude ranch…I think a lot of it had to do with, at the time, Hungry Horse Dam was, I think, one of the largest engineering projects in the world ,and so that attracted people that wanted to visit Montana—obviously Going to the Sun Road and all that sort of stuff. It kind of started to take off in the 50s with those projects and it morphed into more of a guest ranch.”
Chase talks about his grandfather being one of the original outfitters in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and how his experience had reshaped the hunting portion of the Lodge when the guest ranch transition took place. Hunting became accessible through pack trips and the guest ranch operation took shape at the lake.
“We, as kids, ran wild around the place and so that was obviously a pretty awesome way to grow up,” says Chase. “The guests stayed for a week at a time so each week you had a new set of friends that you just ran around and had fun with. There’s a lot of those kids that I grew up with that I’ve remained friends with—we’re all in our 40s now—and they’re all starting to cycle back with their own kids… There’s a freedom here that their kids get to experience that isn’t possible in a lot of places in the country. It’s funny, you know, we take it for granted but kids being able to hop on a bike and ride around the ranch is an amazing experience for them because where they’re coming from, they can’t just hop on a bike and go without Mom and Dad right behind them. It’s just some of those old world experiences that are disappearing these days are a big part of it.”
He says that the ranch is stuck in time, which encourages guests to press pause and just take in their surroundings. Whether it be the physical activity of something recreational, or just relaxing by the lake, there’s something transformational that happens when we’re allowed to just interact with this environment, and clearly it can become a habit. Conversation is easy here. Needs are taken into account, and that familiar feeling of “home” is the mission for everyone who works at Flathead Lake Lodge to make it the most comfortable experience, despite how many times someone has visited.
“I think just that authenticity and the genuine style of hospitality that they experience is almost always what they’re talking about,” Chase says about the guests. “That kind of genuine hospitality is kind of lost in the world today.”
While Chase receives a steady stream of offers to buy the Lodge, he meets them with a respectable “No, thanks.” But of course the choice to keep the Lodge in the family was decided long before anyone wrote to him or stopped by. The generational torch bearing of this position has been handled in an organized family manner, where conversations happened early and effectively. Other pristine properties have been sadly sold off since Montana took its place in the spotlight. “It’s sad to see it, but you know, we’ve been blessed—about 70 to 80% of our guests come back every year. Some of them are in the fifth generation. We love what we do, and as the world’s gotten crazier, the ability to offer families and kids this experience, it just becomes more and more important. It’s our job as stewards of that to keep it going and not just cash out.”
“Everyone comes back—maybe they haven’t visited in 20, 30 years—and the first thing they all mention is that the main lodge smells the same."
"We love what we do, and as the world’s gotten crazier, the ability to offer families and kids this experience, it just becomes more and more important."