The archway above the driveway reads “Summit Station.” The road doesn’t exactly lead to the historic train station, at least not anymore.
After serving as the Great Northern Railway’s bustling Marias Pass depot from 1906 to 1985, the station began to fall apart and the railroad disconnected it from the line. After going through two owners – one of whom built several cabins on the property and ran into trouble for operating an unlicensed fly-fishing outfit – the complex sat abandoned on the 32-acre lot next to Glacier National Park for six years.
“We got it from the bank in ruins,” says Ted Chase, who bought the station building, cabins, and land near East Glacier with his wife, Mara, in the winter of 2013.
The years of neglect showed. Ted believes people passing through were in the habit of hopping off the train, kicking down the door, and spending a few nights there partying. There were enormous piles of trash and beer bottles scattered around the property. The place was stripped of its copper, and almost everything was stolen — only some large kitchen appliances and a heavy pool table remained.
After three years of work, the station is entirely restored. It now houses a kitchen and restaurant, a common room area for cabin guests, and a private-events space, where Ted and Mara host small weddings, family reunions, corporate retreats, and other intimate gatherings.
Though almost everything from the building’s bones to its woodwork was renovated, black-and-white photographs in the lodge from its heyday show a building that seems to have hardly changed.
This is a testament to the Chases, who shouldered all the work with only the help of Garrison Taylor, Ted’s friend since childhood, and a small seasonal staff that helps with day-to-day operations. The priority during renovations was to protect the iconic structure and Swiss-chalet-inspired design.
During their first year at Summit, Ted and Mara settled into the smallest cabin, fixing it up as they lived in it. By the start of their first summer season, the station building was still too damaged for guest use, but a few of the cabins were in good enough shape to welcome the Chases’ first visitors.
Before the second summer, Ted and Mara moved into another one of the derelict cabins, and kept working. They fixed up two more cabins, gutted the station building, and began rebuilding. They had seven cabins and their steakhouse open by the end of the summer. An adventure-seeking Mainer answered a Craigslist ad for a chef, designed a menu with the Chases featuring local fares, and now they serve dishes Ted claims are better than anything he’s eaten in Whitefish.
This work runs in Ted’s blood. He grew up helping out at his family’s lodge in East Glacier, which his parents have owned for over two decades. Summit Mountain Lodge is Ted’s way of carrying on the family tradition of Montanan hospitality.
Ted and Mara met in 2005, when Ted moved to Guatemala to teach total-immersion Spanish. The couple returns to Guatemala annually, where Mara now sources materials for a line of purses and bags with Mayan design that she sells in the lodge.
After moving back to Montana with Mara, Ted felt like his career as a physician’s assistant in the Emergency Room was taking up too much time and energy.
“I wanted my own little piece of heaven with a business,” says Ted, who spent 15 years watching the market, waiting for something like Summit to come along so he could pull back from the ER, slow down, and focus on quality of life. He is a wilderness and wildlife photographer and whitewater rafter, and he missed being able to get out into nature whenever he wanted.
When he heard that the Summit Station was going into foreclosure, he and Mara drove straight to the bank to make a bid. They knew it was a singular project.
“We have probably one of the nicest views in the state of Montana,” says Ted.
There were several interested buyers. All were discouraged by the state of disrepair they estimated it would be prohibitively expensive to restore. But Ted, a journeyman carpenter, knew he and Mara could take on the project.
“We didn’t have the money,” says Mara. “But we had the time.”
And the amount of time the couple has put into carefully revitalizing Summit Station is clear. It holds its own against the beautiful lands, yet still blends right into the scenery. The lodge looks just as natural on the site as do the moose and mountains in the backyard.
“You don’t get the Great Northern history with this kind of view anywhere else,” says Ted. “It’s one of the rarest places in the world.”