Every year when the Beacon staff convenes to chart out the “Amazing Issue,” it’s striking how many story ideas still clutter the cutting-room floor when we roll the paper out for publication.
Try as we might, there’s never enough room to accommodate even a fraction of the eye-popping tales that rise out of the Flathead Valley, let alone offer a definitive account of the year. Most of the stories remain outlined on the Beacon’s storyboard to be hashed out another time.
We whittle our list down to a catalog of feats, facts, figures, and features from this corner of the Treasure State, and then we whittle some more, finally producing a highlight reel of vignettes that we hope capture the range of unique stories that impress us every day.
The Flathead Valley’s cast of Herculean figures and astonishing features runs as deep as its glacier-hewn lakes, moraines and mountain valleys, as rich as its history and as resolute as its residents.
It is home to Glacier National Park and Flathead Lake, to super-athletes and survival tales, a place of unrivaled engineering feats like the Going-to-the-Sun Road, Hungry Horse Dam and the Great Northern Railway, and a suite of species who inhabit the inhospitable terrain much as they did a century ago.
These sketches of amazing accomplishments provide a glimpse of the awe-inspiring wonders that surround us, captured here not to offer a conclusive record book, but to remind us that they’re boundless and ubiquitous.
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Canine Companions Survive Harrowing Journey through Bob Marshall
In July 2015, a pair of mother-daughter English cocker spaniels spent more than two weeks alone in the wilderness
By Tristan Scott
It was mid-July 2015 when the pair of trail-weary English cocker spaniels loped up to a volunteer work crew deep in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. Alone and about 15 miles from the nearest trailhead, the canine companions were dry, thirsty and famished. »»» READ MORE
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Kalispell Army Chaplain Counseling Military Service Members
Matthew Christensen recently received the Army’s highest honor for valor in a non-combat situation
By Dillon Tabish
It was a cold February night in Anchorage, Alaska, when Capt. Matthew C. Christensen, a chaplain in the U.S. Army, received a desperate message from a soldier who was contemplating suicide. »»» READ MORE
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Aiming for a World Record
Local shooter Lars Wood plans to tackle world speed-shooting record for large-caliber short-barreled revolvers
By Molly Priddy
Despite steeling oneself for the inevitable, it’s nearly impossible not to flinch when Lars Wood fires his short-barreled .44 Magnum revolver. »»» READ MORE
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The Legend of George Snyder
George Snyder built the first hotel on Lake McDonald, only to lose it in a card game
By Justin Franz
On the summer of 1894, George Snyder, a 23-year-old from Wisconsin, took a gamble by traveling west on the Great Northern Railway in search of riches, like many others of his era did. A few days after his train left Milwaukee, he arrived in Belton, today called West Glacier. He walked a few miles north to the crystal clear waters of Lake McDonald and knew he had struck gold. »»» READ MORE