Whitefish Montana History & Facts

Whitefish is a town in Flathead County, Montana, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census, there were 7,751 people in the town.

Long before the first Europeans came to Whitefish, native American tribes inhabited the area, most notably the Kootenai, the Pend d’Oreille, 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, it wasn’t until 1883 that the first permanent settler, John Morton 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 was built through what is now Whitefish in 1904, which sparked the development of the town. The town incorporated in 1905. The area was originally known as Stumptown due to the abundant amount of timber that had to be cleared to build the town and railroad and because tree stumps were left in the streets throughout downtown. Early residents of the town worked for the railroad and nearby logging industries. In 2006, over 68,000 passengers embarked and disembarked through the historic Whitefish Depot, a stop on Amtrak's Empire Builder line, with some percentage of those headed to the ski resort on Big Mountain.

The town is located on the western side of the continental divide, near Glacier National Park. Whitefish Lake is a 5.2 square miles (13 km2) natural lake with maximum length 5.8 miles (9.3 km) and width 1.4 miles (2.3 km) and is 233 feet (71 m) at its deepest. The Whitefish River bisects the town of Whitefish as it courses south by southeast to briefly join the Stillwater River before its flows enter the Flathead River.

The historic district of Whitefish is a neighborhood called "The Avenues". This neighborhood is bordered by East 2nd Street to the north, Kalispell Avenue to the west, East 7th Street to the south, and Pine Avenue to the east. It is next to downtown, with many of its houses on the historic registry.

Famous Peoples From Whitefish Montana

David G. Booth

David Gilbert Booth (born c. 1946) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the Executive Chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, which he co-founded with Rex Sinquefield.

Booth graduated from Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas and then received a B.A. in economics in 1968 and an M.S. in business in 1969 from the University of Kansas, also located in Lawrence. He then enrolled at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1969 as a doctoral student, leaving in 1971 with an M.B.A. degree. He was a research assistant to Eugene Fama, and he met his future business partner, Rex Sinquefield, at the school.

The University of Chicago basically plucked me out of Kansas and put me on this trajectory ...Sometimes I wonder, why me? But it happened.

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