Whitefish, Montana
Posted by: 
T0SHEA
N 48° 24.643 W 114° 20.280
11U E 696983 N 5365375
Whitefish is a city which may never have existed had the Great Northern Railway not erred in the original routing of their route through the mountains to the west.
Waymark Code: WMN4ZA
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 12/27/2014
Views: 2
WHITEFISH, 61.3 m. (3,035 alt, 2,803 pop) is a neat lakeshore town, with modern business buildings of brick, and dwellings of frame-and-stucco construction. Shaded streets border lawns ornamented with shrubs and trees.
The town is in the open upper Flathead Valley, with the Kootenai National Forest R., the Flathead L. It is a division point on the Great Northern Ry., with railroad shops. Nearby sawmills give employment to many men.
Montana: A State Guide Book, 1939
The Great Northern Railway arrived in Whitefish in 1903 when there was really no town there, so they built one. The railroad had previously been routed through Kalispell, about ten miles south, but was rerouted further north in an effort to find a better route through the mountains. The original route chosen, and built, proved too steep with too many sharp curves, so the railway wisely chose to find a more satisfactory route, which just happened to pass through where Whitefish now stands. Satisfied that this was the permanent route, the railway decreed Whitefish the western headquarters and divisional point.
Much of downtown Whitefish appears the same as it would have to a tourist passing through in 1939. Many of the old buildings have been restored and informational plaques installed by the Stumptown (Whitefish) Historical Society, attesting to their historical importance to the city. Whitefish is also home to the sole remaining Frank Lloyd Wright building in Montana, once a bank, now used as a law office. Whitefish has certainly grown since 1939, the population in 2010 being 6,357, about 2.5 times the 1939 population.
The city still has the railway yards and the roundhouse and turntable which were built early on, shortly after the arrival of the Great Northern. The Whitefish Great Northern Depot is somewhat of a rarity, having been designed in the Tudor style, which was already falling out of favor in 1928, the year of its completion. Nearly demolished, the depot was purchased from the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1990 by the Stumptown Historical Society. The building has been restored over the course of three years and is home to the Historical Society and the Whitefish Museum.
