Ben Rover Cabin

Half a mile north of Polebridge

The North Fork Road leaves Columbia Falls as Railroad Street, crosses the railroad overpass, and runs north 35 miles, most of it on gravel. At mile 35 a spur turns east one mile to Polebridge. Half a mile north of the settlement, on the right, stands Ben Rover Cabin. The Forest Service directions add a warning: “If you cross into Glacier National Park, you have gone too far.”

The cabin sits in the Whitefish Range along the North Fork of the Flathead River, near the western border of the park. Aspen grow about the property, and a stand of conifers rises behind it. The front opens on a grassy field with a view across to the peaks of the Livingston Range inside Glacier. Outside are a campfire pit with benches, a vault toilet, and a well with a hand pump. The well is shut from December 1 through March 31, so winter guests haul in their own water.

There is no electricity. Light comes from propane lamps. Cooking is done on a propane stove, and heat comes from a propane heater and a wood stove. Firewood is supplied from October 1 to May 1 and is meant for the stove only. Two double beds, a bunk, and two twin beds sleep eight. The kitchen holds basic pots, pans, and utensils. Because the cabin may stand empty for long stretches, it also keeps supplies for trapping mice. Grizzly bears frequent the area, and food, coolers, and garbage are kept indoors.

The Flathead National Forest rents the cabin year-round through its Hungry Horse-Glacier View Ranger District. A guest may stay three nights at most and seven days in a calendar year. Great American Outdoors Act funding has furnished the cabin with new furniture. From the door, guests fish, canoe, and kayak the river. The float from Polebridge to Glacier Rim runs mostly through Class I and II water. In winter the road is plowed only intermittently, and four-wheel drive with chains is recommended. Winter visitors come for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling. Limited supplies are sold up the road at the Polebridge Mercantile, the store Ben Rover once kept.

The storekeeper from Polson

The Rovers were a family of Norwegian descent who came from North Dakota to Polson. There were seven children. Most of them went to California, while Ben stayed in Montana and moved to the North Fork.

The store had been built in 1914 by William L. “Bill” Adair, who homesteaded 160 acres on the west side of the river and lived in a log “mother cabin” beside it. The Mercantile’s own history and a Smoky Bear Ranch account both say the Adairs sold in 1943, and that year Ben and his wife Annette took over. Like other owners until the 1950s, the Rovers lived in the mother cabin, which is now the Northern Lights Saloon. According to the historian Lois Walker, Ben built three rental cabins at the store.

His nephew Hal Rover grew up in San Diego and came north as a young teenager, staying with his family in the cabin beside the store. “We spent a couple weeks there and it was like being in heaven,” Hal told the Whitefish Pilot in 2015. He helped his uncle feed the cows that gave milk for the store and mow fields of alfalfa with horses. One day the mower struck a piece of wire and snapped its tongue. Ben cut down a tree and repaired it. “He made a new tongue and went on mowing,” Hal said. “You either had to know how to fix it yourself or know somebody that could help.”

Polebridge also tells a story about those years. Valerie Cox, whose husband’s family has been connected with the store since the Depression, heard that it changed hands many times, sometimes less than a year apart. Buyers learned that winter trade would not cover their payments, and by the following spring they sold it back to the original owner. Lois Walker said she had heard that Ben Rover sold it more than once. Karen Feather, a later proprietor, knew of only one time he sold it and had to take it back.

A cabin up the road

Walker described the end of the Rover years in a 2018 interview. The Rovers had the store from 1943 to 1955, when Ted Ross bought it. The two families swapped houses, and the Rosses took the Rovers’ house in Kalispell. Annette was not well and lived only a month or so after the move. Ben then went back to Ross and asked to buy some of the land. Ross sold him everything from the homestead cabin up to where the Ben Rover cabin now stands. “He built his cabin there, so he had someplace to come,” Walker said. Rover later remarried.

According to Ron and D’Ann Wilhelm, the cabin was built in 1955. The sale left a long tail. Bob Olson bought the store in 1969, and he recalled, “I was paying Ted Ross, and I was paying Ben Rover.” Walker found it surprising that Ross still owed money after twelve years. Olson’s answer was simple: “Well, there wasn’t much money floating around then.”

Ben spent a couple of winters with family in San Diego but stayed mostly on the North Fork. “Ben couldn’t leave the land,” Hal said. Ben’s letters home were full of wild Montana. One told of a grizzly that came to the cabin door trying to get in. Ben wrote that the room was full of noise, and only later did he realize the noise was his own yelling. In the early 1960s Hal came back with his new wife, Angela, and the couple slept on a fold-out couch in the cabin’s living room.

A sign out front

The Wilhelms, who were friends of Ben’s, bought the cabin from him in the 1970s. In 1982 Ron Wilhelm and Rick Upton laid a stone foundation under the Mercantile. The Wilhelms sold the cabin to the Flathead National Forest in the early 1990s.

In 2008 Hal and Angela came looking for the cabin. To their surprise they found it with a sign out front naming it the Ben Rover Cabin. In 2015 they rented it for a few days. It seemed much larger than they remembered, and they guessed it had been expanded. They found the Mercantile changed as well. In the 1960s its shelves had held more food and no souvenirs for tourists, but they said the people were just as friendly. “I want to come back and bring the whole family,” Hal said.