Page 108 - Flathead Living Fall 2014

food&drink
For Dutcher and stickney, the hitching post is a home away from home. nearly 30 years ago, Dutcher and her late husband pur- chased the classic one-room tavern in the heart of Marion. While juggling all the jobs that come with running a bar and restau- rant, Dutcher raised a family. stickney spent most of her youth at the hitching post. her mother tried to get out of the business several times and has sold and repurchased the post four times. her latest purchase was two years ago after the former owner from California decided to part ways with the restaurant, which was renamed The Marion grille for four years. to save the town’s beloved community center, Dutcher and stickney stepped up.
“This is not my idea of a retirement,” Dutcher says with a smile. “But there’s a lot of history here.”
The original hilltop hitching post, named after the locale where cowboys once tied up their horses, was built in 1942 while the libby Dam was being constructed 60 miles up the road.
“There were a lot of men commuting back and forth from Kalispell. This is often where they’d stop,” Dutcher says.
Back then, Marion was even more remote than today, with barely a few hundred
residents who enjoyed the solitary, pictur- esque scenery on the outskirts of the bus- tling valley. The landscape is lush in ameni- ties, including 17 pristine lakes in a 50-mile radius, including little Bitterroot lake, and the lost trail national Wildlife refuge, an idyllic section of public land open to abun- dant wildlife viewing and hunting.
it’s not a coincidence that the main
top Sitting at a table in the Hilltop Hitching Post, Jane Dutcher and Shauna Stickney talk about running the popular restaurant.
bottom Huckleberry cheesecake is seen at the Hilltop Hitching Post.
106 FLATHEAD LIVING | FALL 2014