Ode to Polebridge

There are two things you notice on arriving in Polebridge, Montana via the dusty, gravel Outer North Fork Road. The first is a handwritten sign nailed to a tree that says “Slow Down! People Breathing.” The second is the Polebridge Mercantile, a building constructed in 1914 and operated continuously as a general store ever since.

Polebridge cannot accurately be called a town, a village, or even a sleepy hamlet. Really, Polebridge is a collection, scattered in a huge, grassy meadow, of fewer buildings than can be counted on two hands. Most of them belong to the “Merc,” which was being advertised for sale at $950,000. The poster on the door advised that purchase of the Merc includes twenty-two acres, several rental cabins, and a bunkhouse.

The Merc seems always to be pulsing with activity. Even at 6:00 on a Wednesday evening, a small crowd was gathered on the porch stuffing themselves full of the baked goods produced and sold in abundance at the Merc. Several children had seated themselves under a sign announcing “No Non-Local Dogs Allowed on the Porch,” and were enjoying enormous chocolate chip cookies.

The other permanent resident of Polebridge is the North Fork Hostel, an establishment which observes on its website that the only local animal not yet seen through its windows is the elusive wolf. That is not unimpressive, considering the area is home to grizzly bears, black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, eagles, moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, deer, coyote and foxes.

Once you enter the park and get on the Inside North Fork Road, several large log homes are visible on a bluff at the western edge of the meadow overlooking the Flathead River. Though the area is uncompromisingly remote, the Merc no doubt does a good business, at least in the summertime. There are campgrounds at Kintla and Bowman Lakes that are full every night in summer, and still more people who are happy to pitch their tents at Polebridge proper.

And there are always at least two losers who haul their canoe up to Kintla Lake only to turn back around and come down again.