Whitefish, Montana

Whitefish (Salish: epɫx̣ʷy̓u, "has whitefish") is a city in Flathead County, Montana, United States. According to the 2020 United States census, there were 7,751 people in the city.

History

Archaeological records indicate that native American tribes shared hunting grounds in the area, most notably the Kutenai, the Pend d'Oreilles, and the Bitterroot Salish. The Kootenai lived in the area for more than 14,000 years, inhabiting the mountainous terrain west of the Continental Divide, and traveled east of the divide for occasional buffalo hunts. Though trappers, traders, and waves of westward immigrants passed through the area during the second half of the century, and a group of Métis (mixed race descendants of fur traders, trappers and Native Americans) lived around the site of Whitefish (later largely moving south to the Flathead Indian Reservation), the first permanent settler is identified as John Morton who built a cabin on the shore of Whitefish Lake, just west of the mouth of the Whitefish River. Morton was joined by the local logging industry forefathers—including the Baker and Hutchinson brothers—in the early 1890s. Logging crews "boomed-up" their logs behind a dam built at the river mouth by the Boston & Montana Commercial Company, which, when opened, created a rush of water that helped float the logs down the river to Kalispell.

The Great Northern Railway originally built its main line south of Whitefish. When the Great Northern rerouted the road in 1904 to avoid the steep Haskell Pass between Kalispell and Libby, preferring a longer but more gentle grade via Eureka, the development of what is now Whitefish was sparked. The town incorporated in 1905 and automatically became a city when its population reached 1,000 residents by 1910.