Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 10.7.15

COVER
CHARLES CONRAD
THE MAN AND THE
Famed home of Kalispell’s founding father, the Conrad Mansion celebrates 120 years as an historic landmark and 40 years as a revered museum open to the public
LBY DILLON TABISH
ast week a large group of visitors toured the Conrad Mansion near downtown Kalispell just like any other weekday between May and October. The tour lasted an hour, but
it could have gone on much longer as enthusiastic guests seemed enthralled with experiencing a time that now survives mostly in black-and-white photos and inside this 13,000-square-foot relic.
“You’re really walking into a time machine. It’s as if you were living in 1890,” said Mike Kofford, a for- mer executive director of Conrad Mansion Museum.
“It’s the best representation of the earliest years of the city of Kalispell. It’s absolutely a community landmark.”
Completed in 1895, the Conrad Mansion is cele- brating a pair of milestones this year. It was 120 years ago when Kalispell’s founding father, Charles E. Con- rad, welcomed his family into the newly built manor that was designed by renowned architect Kirtland Cutter, who also designed Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park.
And it was 40 years ago when restoration efforts saved the mansion from ruin and transformed it into a revered public museum and memorial. The museum attracts nearly 9,000 visitors annually from May 15 through Oct. 15, when daily tours are offered, as well as in the offseason when private tours can be booked.
The large guestbook sitting in the entranceway of the Great Hall reflects the mansion’s far-reaching influence — signatures of visitors from everywhere exclaiming their appreciation for the site, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and has been called “the most authentic pre-1900 man- sion in the Pacific Northwest.”
“There’s still secrets to discover and things that the house is telling us all these years later,” Gennifer Sauter, executive director of the mansion, said.
The forested landscape north of Flathead Lake beckoned to Charles Conrad when he was an ambitious entrepreneur and avid outdoors- man seeking a new horizon.
Born in Virginia in 1850, Conrad grew up on a plantation in the South, the second oldest of 13 chil- dren. When he was only 14, he was enlisted along with his older brother William in the Civil War as a mem- ber of Mosby’s Rangers, a skilled battalion of cavalry
20
OCTOBER 7, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM