On July 8, 1943, as Allied Forces charged toward Hitler in the thick of World War II, Montana Congressman Mike Mansfield penned an urgent letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“My Dear Mr. President: This is the most important letter I have ever written in my life …”
As Mansfield stated, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in partnership with the Bonneville Power Administration, was seeking to raise Flathead Lake 17 feet by 1945 and 37 feet ultimately, from 2,893 feet to 2,930.
The Army Corps of Engineers was proposing to expand Kerr Dam’s capabilities on the Flathead River south of the lake and raise the pool level to generate more electricity, which would be shipped to Washington. Federal officials at the time said the added storage was needed in the shortest time possible for war production in the Pacific Northwest. It was later discovered that the sudden boost in power was for the development of the atomic bomb in the Washington plant at Hanford.
As World War II raged on and scientists worked feverishly to develop the atom bomb, Army engineers studied the region for possible water sources that could quickly and sufficiently capture 3 million acre feet of additional water. They landed on the largest natural freshwater lake in the West, which became a pivotal piece in wartime efforts and also thrust local residents into the middle of a serious situation.
As Mansfield noted in his letter to Roosevelt, the proposal had massive implications on the Flathead Valley. An estimated 25,000 people were directly in the path of the floodwaters, which would consume the towns of Somers, Bigfork and Polson, among other lakeshore communities. Another 50,000 people would be indirectly impacted as the waters would swell throughout the entire valley, covering agricultural lands and inundating any homes or developments along the Flathead River all the way up to Columbia Falls.
“It would have wiped out some towns completely, others partially; and it would have made a stinking morass of the most beautiful scenic area in the United States,” Mansfield wrote.
In June of 1943, representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers and the BPA held a public meeting inside Flathead County High School in Kalispell. Hundreds of residents turned out. As news reports stated, the auditorium was packed and the excess crowd spilled into the lawn in front of the high school, where the local radio station set up loud speakers transmitting the proceedings inside. Local residents expressed outrage and opposition to the proposal, from loggers in Somers who said they would be out of work to farmers and families who said their homes and land would be completely destroyed.
The Army Corps of Engineers termed the project as “the least evil” and said it was recommending the plan because it would not cause the flooding of as much land as the alternate sites. The agency later revealed that engineers even studied raising the lake by as much as 60 feet, which would have backed Flathead Lake to south Kalispell.
Just when it appeared that this corner of Montana was being sacrificed, Mansfield emerged as a powerful leader.
Despite being only a freshman lawmaker, Mansfield rallied support for the Flathead Valley’s cause, and in a diplomatic style that would later define the legendary U.S. senator, he convinced government officials, including Roosevelt, to ditch the plan and keep Flathead Lake as it was.
Mansfield would later raise support for the controversial Glacier View Dam, which was proposed on the North Fork between Huckleberry Mountain and Glacier View Mountain and would have flooded over 10,000 acres in Glacier National Park. The National Park Service, conservation groups and local residents successfully convinced the government to ditch that plan as well.
Instead, the U.S. government moved forward with the development of Hungry Horse Dam on the South Fork Flathead River as an alternate source of energy.
The meeting in Kalispell in 1943 and Mansfield’s subsequent letter to Roosevelt stand out as a remarkable event in U.S. history. The defining events of that year set the Flathead Valley and the lives of its residents on the course that eventually led to today. So much could be different otherwise.
After ending his career as the longest serving Senate majority leader in American history in 1977, Mansfield was asked by a reporter to reflect on his years in Washington, D.C. and identify his single proudest accomplishment.
As journalist and author Don Oberdorfer wrote in his biography of Mansfield, the legendary statesman responded, “Saving Flathead Lake.”