Work should begin in July on rebuilding the Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park/1940, T.J. Hileman Photograph

Construction should start early in July on the Sperry Chalet in the backcountry of Glacier National Park. The historic lodge, a rustic yet charming remnant tied to the golden age of rail travel, was engulfed by a wildfire last fall and feared lost. But charitable donations through the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's desire to see the lodge quickly rebuilt, has placed the project on the fast track.

Less than a month after Glacier staff issued an environmental assessment examining how best to rebuild the lodge, a $4 million contract was issued Tuesday to Dick Anderson Construction of Great Falls, Montana, to further stabilize the stone skeleton that is all that remains of the lodge located 6 miles uphill from Lake McDonald. This summer and into early fall the construction crews are expected to permanently stabilize the ruins, put a roof on the structure, and build interior walls.

The Glacier Conservancy last fall quickly raised $200,000 to pay for initial stabilization of the skeleton, and the heavy snows that fell on the park showed the wisdom and benefit of that work. 

“They were able to make some things happen for the stabilization effort that needed to happen quickly," Glacier Superintendent Jeff Mow told the Traveler earlier this year.

Glacier National Park Conservancy saw that the chalet's stone skeleton was stabilized last fall/NPS

Twelve million dollars for the rebuilding effort came from a $138 million pot of unallocated dollars that Congress gave Interior earlier this year to address unspecified deferred maintenance and major construction projects across the National Park System. While Secretary Zinke last week announced the distribution of $256 million (most earmarked for specific projects) for deferred maintenance work across the system, he bypassed the $153,838,276 in deferred maintenance projects at Glacier and instead focused solely on Sperry Chalet, which can sleep about 54 guests a night at a cost of about $200 per guest.

Interior Department staff didn't respond this week to an inquiry regarding the secretary's choice to fund a lodge that a tiny fraction of Glacier's more than 3.3 million visitors a year use or even see. At the Park Service's Denver Service Center, staff said the project was expedited at Secretary Zinke's request.

But the Montana native's decision and the speed at which the Park Service is moving to rebuild the chalet, which was one of nine the Great Northern Railway constructed across the park in the early 1900s to cater to their passengers, is perplexing to some.

“It just seems that when you have a system that remote and that complicated ... that that’s exactly the place where you don’t fast-track," said Michael Jamison, senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association's Crown of the Continent initiative. "Why is it so important that other things get shouldered out of the way? At every step we’re just zipping along down this path without stopping to say, 'Is this what we want to do?' It may be that building it is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but we never got to have the conversation.”

“I think we will ultimately waste time and money by not doing the preparation," he said, adding that "less than one tenth of 1 percent of the visitors who come to Glacier" stay there.

Glacier officials could not be immediately reached Tuesday to discuss the chalet project or their deferred maintenance projects. The price tag of those projects, according to National Park Service records, include nearly $6 million for repairs to waste-water treatment systems in the park, and another $4 million for water systems. Glacier's paved roads need $87 million worth of repairs, the records note, and the park's buildings another $33 million.

All told, there are more than 60 deferred maintenance projects in Glacier that the agency rated as "serious." 

At The Pew Charitable Trusts, which has been working to see the park system's nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog erased, Marcia Argust said the $12 million dedicated to the chalet shouldn't detract from the more than $200 million earmarked for deferred maintenance work in the parks.

“You have over $200 million that is going to deferred maintenance. Think about just a few years ago prior to 2015, you did not have money like this going to deferred maintenance projects," she said. "This is a positive, a tremendous first step, second step and third step."

At the Glacier National Park Conservancy, staff saw great public support for rebuilding Sperry.

"It’s really felt by our organization and the park, and National Park Service for that matter, it’s such an important piece of history, part of the park, that if we didn’t make the decision to rebuild that it would be lost," said Nikki Eisinger, the Conservancy's development director.

The project won't be accomplished easily, as the location is within recommended wilderness. That could complicate the helicopter flights anticipated to ferry much of the work materials to the site if someone sues over the whirlybirds encroaching on lands that are to be managed as official wilderness. Too, will construction crews use power tools, which also are banned in wilderness areas without special permission, or will they use 19th century hand tools?

Great Northern Railway President Louis Hill saw Sperry and other chalets in the park as an adventuresome extension of his railroad. Starting with Belton Chalet across from the train depot in West Glacier, he oversaw construction of nine chalets that stretched across the park and which were used to entice railroad passengers to see Glacier from the back of a horse with nights spent in relative comfort. But the grand era of the chalets -- Belton, Two Medicine, Cutbank, St. Mary, Sun Point, Many Glacier, Granite Park, Sperry, and Gunsight Lake -- came to an end with World War II.

Today all that are left are Belton, Granite Park, and the charred shell of Sperry, which was destroyed in a matter of hours in September 2017 by flames from a forest fire that left behind only the blackened stone skeleton of one of the park system's most unique lodgings.

Sperry Chalet, Glacier National Park

According to a release from Glacier, the initial construction phase will be funded primarily with federal dollars, while subsequent phases will be funded with a $1.2 million property insurance reimbursement, privately solicited donations from the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and additional federal funds.  

Among the proposed upgrades for the chalet will be a fire alarm system and an accessible room for visitors with disabilities. Additional rock, if needed, would be sourced from the nearby quarry that was used in 1913-14 when the chalet was built. Helicopters and stock would bring up other building materials.