Tracing the Stage Route

SEELEY LAKE – Condon resident Dick Wolff has the rusty body of a 1928 Model A Ford in his back yard. Wolff and his brothers have been chasing parts and pieces of it from Swan Valley to Helena. They've also been trying to piece together the Ford's history, though it is difficult to separate the Model A's story from the sketchy history of the Seeley Lake and Swan Valley postal service. One thing the brothers know for sure, their Model A is one of the "Stages" used to haul mail, supplies and people between Missoula and Swan Lake in the early 1900s.

The book "Cabin Fever," a collection of stories about the history of the Seeley Lake area, indicates the first regular mail deliveries to the lumberjacks and scattered residents in the area began in 1907 when the Anaconda Company started sending weekly supply wagons to the lumber camps. At that time there was no road around Salmon Lake so the supply route that began at Bonner went by way of Fish Lake, Woodworth, Sperry Grade and Clearwater to Seeley Lake. Wolff remembers his grandmother, Nessie Wolff, sorting mail drops out of her house at Woodworth.

In 1912 Margaret Corlett became the first official postmistress, operating out of her house. The pamphlet "SOS Seeley Ovando Swan," (SOS) provides a few additional details about those postal deliveries: "The first road... angled down the hillside into Morrell Flats, terminating at Corlett Stage Station at Morrell Creek Bridge [near the present-day Double Arrow entrance sign]. Seeley Lake Village was yet unborn and Corlett was the end of the road for travelers heading north."

The Swan Valley section of "SOS" reports that area was the last to be opened for homesteading and "Land-hungry settlers walked into the green valley from Corlett Stage Station south of Seeley Lake."

Mildred Chaffin corroborates that detail in her book "My Forty Years Scribblin's." Chaffin recorded an interview with Mrs. Hilda (Rovero) Johnson who homesteaded in 1913, "There being no road into the Swan at the time, Mrs. Johnson tells how she and her four children walked from Corlett, where the first post office and stage station was operated in the old log building...at the Morrell Creek bridge, to their homestead a distance of twenty-eight miles."

Though it does not give a time frame, SOS states mail for Swan Valley homesteaders came from Swan Lake twice a week, "by team and sleigh, on horseback, snow shoes or skis when necessary." "Cabin Fever," however, records a number of Swan Valley homesteaders among those receiving mail at the Corlett Post Office in 1915.

In 1918 the mail location moved 10 miles north to Murphy Creek and the name was officially changed to Seeley Lake Post Office. Though the name remained the same thereafter, the postal location continued to change with each new postmaster appointment. During most of the 1920s, Oscar "Pop" Miller carried out postmaster duties from his house just south of present-day Boy Scout Road. Bert Sullivan moved the post office into his store when he was postmaster.

Chaffin's book reported, "By 1922, there was a semiweekly stage service from Missoula to Seeley Lake, Then, in 1925, a motorized stage made the trip daily."

Tamarack Resort was one of the stops for the vehicle. The resort still sells photo cards picturing the Model A delivering mail in the winter. The back of the cards reads, "O.H. Coates won the bid to carry the mail from Missoula to Seeley Lake and four villages between the two points. Old timers bet Coates would never make the grade as winter came. He showed up with a snow mobile modeled after those he'd seen in pictures of Admiral Byrd's expedition in Antarctica."

The Wolff brothers have recovered the snowmobile treads and ski runners for the Model A. They explained, "You ordered them as a kit. Then you could turn your regular passenger car into one that could go over the snow. People don't see these very often so they think it's something extremely rare, but there's quite a few of them out there. By 1935 I think there were 18,000 kits out there. There's two at the museum in Polson."

Different snow kits were available. Some had two, some three-wheel tracks. In some the front tires were removed and replaced by ski runners. Others, like those used in the Seeley Swan valleys, kept the front tires in place and positioned the ski plates to the inside. The runners could be raised or lowered as needed. A large wrench was used to lock them in place. Wolff said the added track unit rose higher than the bottom of the doors in some vehicles, so the doors had to be cut to about the level of the seats to allow the driver to get in.

In the next Pathfinder issue, Tracing the Stage Route Part II will discuss more about the "stages" and the Stage Station Building constructed for them.