ESSEX, Mont. — The Izaak Walton Inn, the trackside property along BNSF main line adjacent to Glacier National Park that is a longtime railfan destination, is under new ownership.
The Daily Inter Lake reports that Brian Kelly, who has owned the property since 2006, has sold it to Loge Camps, a hotel marketed toward outdoors adventure clientele.
The hotel, with its rental cabins including cabooses and an F45 locomotive on a 100-acre property, sold for $13.5 million.
Gavin Burns, Loge Camps’ vice president for business development, told the newspaper the company will update rooms and update the hotel’s café but that most of the property will not be changed: “We’re not developers. We’re remodelers,” he said. “The property has so much character and great history.”
The hotel dates to 1939, when it was built by the Great Northern Railway to provide lodging for railroad workers. It was named to the National Register of Histroic Places in 1985.
Spent a couple of days there about ten years ago. Fly fishing was great for cut throat trout. Even went river rafting. At the time we found the inn to be outstanding. Food was great.
I trust after the renovations the pipes will still bang away in the middle of the night
Enjoyed my stay in December of 2021. The lodge was about only 10% full at the time. Hopefully, they will upgrade the internet speed there. Would love to spend a full week there. It is very peaceful in December.
Amtrak is rather sad and pathetic in terms of schedules. Whenever I travel to lecture at the University of Illinois at Champaign, I always come down from Chicago the night before. This requires the cost of an additional hotel room, but it is the only way to make the class lecture schedule.
The article mentions the F45 is included. I thought it was owned by some other individuals.
Great news. We spent a week in one of the cabooses in 2021. It was shabby and the dining room was very poor. A a lot of this probably due to the pandemic but it was time for a reboot.
I spent a week there in the winter of 1999. The Empire Builder left me off a short walk from the hotel. Wonderful place to stay for someone who is both a railfan and a cross country skier. Awesome food and rooms with plenty of winter fun skiing and snowshoeing. Didn’t need a car at all.
But even then, the Empire Builder was having its problems with tardiness. A college professor, I believe, got off the eastbound one day and stayed a couple of days intending to take another eastbound to deliver a presentation on railroads in the west at a North Dakota college. But that Builder was so late that by the time he got to his destination in North Dakota he was too late for his own presentation. It had been cancelled as we found out when he returned west a couple of days later. Never trust Amtrak to get you to your destination on time or even close to it.
Not just Amtrak. Had an experience with Southwest Airlines that was even worse. My inbound to Las Vegas was late and they had overbooked my connection to Washington-Dulles, which they had already boarded. They sent me and a dozen other Dulles-bound passengers to Baltimore instead! Didn’t get to my house (Eight miles from Dulles…) until 2 AM 3.5 hours late.
I put more trust in a Powerball or MegaMillions ticket than I do an airline ticket…
Marvelous lodging and meals. Assume they will continue with the GN blankets
in the rooms and the replica china for sale. Perhaps the new owners will improve
the area where the Empire Builder ‘station’. stop.
Bill Grant
Cols, OH