(train horn blowing) - [John] Coming up on this episode of Backroads of Montana, we'll meet a Chinook man with a very important occupation, just not a very desirable one.

- [Diana] It isn't a job I'd ever want.

- [John] We'll travel down the aisle of a western Montana bookstore, and discover the owner's deeper connection to the place.

- [Keren] 44 Years I've been here, and I hold it loosely in my hand, but I treasure it.

- [John] Take a drive to learn the story behind this concrete curiosity.

(drill whirring) And we go inside the restoration of a Montana church that reveals new insights into its past.

- [Greg] Gently play it in the line out, yeah.

- [John] This show just might lift your spirits.

- [Greg] That's perfect.

- [Announcer] Backroads of Montana is made possible with production support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, the Big Sky film grant, and the University of Montana.

♪ Home is where Montana is ♪ Montana is my home ♪ From mountain peaks to prairie lands ♪ ♪ The places I have known ♪ And I'm bound to ramble ♪ Yes, I'm bound to roam ♪ And when I'm in off the road, now, boys ♪ ♪ Montana is my home - Welcome to Backroads of Montana.

I'm John Twiggs.

Yes, it is strange to start the show without William.

It even feels odd to us, but he's entrusted us with the keys, and to take good care in telling the stories of interesting people and places across Montana.

Today, we're in the town of Gardiner.

Throughout the show, we'll learn about the place that's a gateway to America's first national park.

We'll dive into its colorful history, the surrounding natural beauty, and we'll see how Gardiner is recovering from a recent devastating fire downtown.

Many small Montana towns have hardworking folks that supply essential services.

Residents quickly learn who to turn to for specific needs.

Our first story takes us up to the Hi-Line, where one business owner can guarantee that eventually everyone will need his services.

(whimsical music) - [Daniel] I believe that if you're not growing, you're dying, you know?

- [John] 34 year old Daniel Dahl does just about everything around the office.

- This is our linen supply, washing machine.

We do our own laundry.

- [John] He crunches numbers.

- [Daniel] $85.

- [John] Manages his own fleet of vehicles.

- And it's a dirty garage, 'cause we have to keep moving stuff in and out, right?

- [John] He handles freight.

- [Daniel] My kids will not want to do this for a living.

- [John] And refrigeration.

- We have a cooler, a one man cooler.

- [John] But he's also responsible for the delicate details of the job.

- We're not here trying to win any art shows.

- It's a job that I want nothing to do with, so I'm glad that there's people like him that can be that way, and do things.

(whimsical music) - [John] In a specialty others might consider somber.

- Do you want your mother to be dressed for the funeral?

- [John] Daniel maintains a sense of humor.

(Daniel laughing) - He definitely keeps a light work environment, which is good when you're working in this industry.

(organ playing somber music) (phone ringing) - Dahl Funeral Home, this is Daniel.

(whimsical music) I thought I'd be a teacher.

Teaching's fine, but it's really not cut out for me, and thought about being a police officer, but I'm too nice, I think, to be a cop.

So I think you have to have a little more grit than I do, and 'cause I'm just too nice of a guy.

I'd probably not write a ticket my whole career, you know?

- [John] So instead, he took a less popular path, mortuary science, a specialty that requires a little bit of everything.

- [Daniel] It doesn't come easy to me at all, but it's something I really enjoy doing.

- [John] And even though it's a heavier lift than other jobs, Daniel knows he'll never be out of work.

- [Daniel] You know, it's consistent.

It's always needed.

It's recession-proof, you know?

- I feel like it takes a really special person to be a funeral director, and Daniel does a really good job at that.

- It's like I meant to make her look this good.

- There's a personal touch to it, you know?

He can relate to what you, kind of help you plan a service, and help you make it go the way you want it to.

And if you don't know what you want to do, he is there to help you with it too.

I mean, so much to think about when that happens in a short amount of time.

(phone ringing) - I hear the ring, and I'm like, "Oh, somebody's calling again, somebody died," or yeah, his phone's never off.

He comes home, and he really worries about those families, and stresses out that he's doing a good enough job for them.

- [Daniel] I couldn't do it without my wife, and I couldn't do without this community.

- [John] But as much as he cares for the living, to Daniel, those who've passed are equally important.

- Cover so I don't have to worry about makeup.

I'm treating this person as if they were alive, you know?

Sorry, not meaning to drop your foot like that.

I believe in the afterlife.

I believe I'm responsible to the people I work with every day, and if I treat everybody well and nice, in the afterlife, they will see that they see how hard I work for them and their families, and I that's gonna count.

(whimsical music) - [John] Daniel spends hours each week chauffeuring caskets between Hi-Line communities.

Each service often requires multiple trips, hauling the necessary equipment to the grave site.

- You know, the interesting part about my job, and about Chinook is people die old here.

Here I'm burying like 102 year old ladies on a monthly basis.

People here live a long time.

I dunno if it's the water or whatever, but if you wanna live a long time, move to Chinook, so just saying.

(chuckles) - [John] This facility has outlived three funeral directors.

Its freight elevator has withstood the weight of 84 years of passengers.

Chinook's first undertaker, Herman Cooper, designed the building to give him a naturally cool basement.

- [Daniel] It's not 90 degrees in here.

- [John] To embalm the bodies of his fellow residents, victims to the harsh realities of rural life.

They drowned, were struck by lightning, or thrown from a wagon.

- We have some of his old ledgers that he used to keep, which are pretty cool.

- [John] Cooper's original ledgers, telegrams, and embalming bottles all came with the historic funeral home Daniel purchased five years ago.

They're still in the basement, along with a few souvenirs from the funeral directors in between.

- These are, unfortunately, cremated remains that haven't been claimed.

These are old burial clothes from the '60s.

It's an honor to continue this legacy of this building in a sense, to make them proud of how this building is still standing in the community, still performing services today, even after all this time, you know?

So that, I'm sure they're proud of that.

- [John] Daniel is acutely aware of all those who've gone before him.

- [Daniel] One, two, three.

- [John] But he knows for the rest of us, death is anything but routine, so when that time comes.

- We are gathered to remember.

- [John] And so much feels completely out of our control.

- Amen.

- [John] Daniel steps into any role that needs filling.

- [Funeral Officiant] To comfort one another.

- [John] To offer some stability.

- This is my first experience with a funeral ever, and Daniel was great.

He took care of everything from beginning to end, and I didn't have to worry about a thing.

- [Daniel] Everybody deserves to be treated very well at their time of death.

And when the service is over, and the person's laid to rest in whatever form they choose, they're on to the next step, and I've done my job.

- Daniel's business has expanded to Havre and Malta, but he intends to keep the home base in Chinook.

If there's any doubt about that, he's already planned his own plot in the Chinook cemetery.

(upbeat music) We're spending the day in the southern Montana town of Gardiner, which also has its own rich history.

References to the town date back to the early 1800s.

Legend has it, it was named after the fur trapper Johnson Gardiner.

The spectacular location at the confluence of the Gardiner and Yellowstone Rivers was perfect for park visitors.

Today, the town of almost 900 still serves as home base for travelers, but that was put to the test in 2020, when a devastating fire ripped through downtown.

The accidental blaze gutted four businesses, including a rafting company operated by Sarah Ondrus and her family.

- I received a phone call from my husband telling us that our office was on fire.

No one was hurt, but it was a total loss.

Our community came together and raised money, and it was amazing response from our neighbors and friends.

Life is good here in Gardiner, and we're Gardiner strong.

- Our next story also features a small business, a used bookstore.

We're off to western Montana for a story with a dream, an untimely loss, and a bittersweet ending.

(bells jingling) The Montana Valley Bookstore smells the way every good used bookstore should.

- Most customers will come in, and I can hear them go.

(Keren breathing in) - [John] It smells of wood smoke and old tomes, lots of them, over 100,000, to be more precise.

Floor to ceiling, row after row, even the basement features endless paperback options.

But for the owner, Keren Wolhart, perhaps one of the most important stories isn't on these shelves.

It's in the unlikely way this huge bookstore came to be tucked into the main street of tiny Alberton.

- [Ken] I want to soak up what's going on here.

- [John] It was the early '70s and Keren's father, Ken Wales was lonesome.

He missed his wife and nine kids back in Pennsylvania as he drove west, scouting for a new place to start a used bookstore.

- He bought a tape recorder, and started taping letters home to us, 'cause he figured, "I'm just streaming my thoughts, and gonna speak them into this recorder instead of writing them down."

- [John] Today, the audio postcards are precious to Keren, his voice carrying her back to the day he fell in love with western Montana, narrating a stream of consciousness that verged on the poetic as he described the landscape just outside Alberton.

- [Ken] Boy, where I'm standing right now, looking up at these big mountains, and they are mountains, that's all.

- Back east, he was so fast, like type A personality.

Then I remember asking my mom, "What is wrong with dad?

His voice is so mellow and calm.

Why is he like that?"

And she just smiled and said, "The west has that effect on you."

- [Ken] It is God's country.

I mean he's made it lovelier here, somehow.

- [John] It was that faith that started the family's journey in the used bookstore business almost a decade earlier.

- My dad was going to Bible school north of Philadelphia.

He would go to auctions and buy theology books for school.

- [John] The volumes he bought often came in a box with a bunch of other castoffs.

- He was two scotch to throw 'em away, so he would put them all in the garage.

He'd box 'em back up, put 'em on pallets, and after several years, we had 15,000 books in the garage, and then he turned to mom and said, "Why don't we sell all those books we have?"

And they opened a used bookstore.

- [John] The Pennsylvania store burgeoned into a tremendous success, and more than 100,000 books.

So Wales traveled west looking for wide open spaces.

He found Alberton, and with it, a new vision, to create a destination bookstore in this small town.

- [Ken] Ah well, that's just a bunch of dreaming, but then, you know, if it ever comes, why, we can be dreamers.

- [John] Wales managed to buy a historic building on Main Street, and in less than five years, the fledgling bookstore opened.

But Keren's father wouldn't live to see it grow into his dream.

He died unexpectedly in 1981.

- My mom asked all my siblings, "Do you want the bookstore in Alberton?

Do you wanna move there?

Do you want the bookstore?"

Everybody else said no, and I said yes.

- [John] 23 years old, and a single mom with a three year old, Keren took on the weight of her father's unfulfilled dream.

It was a responsibility she never shirked, living upstairs in the store, and even giving birth to her second child there.

- Sam was born at 8:00, and the midwife wanted to know what time it was so she could write it down, and my son Ray was there.

He was 11 years old, and she said, "Does anyone know what time it is?"

And Ray said, "Yep, it's 8:00, just in time to open the bookstore."

- Yeah, I opened the bookstore that day, but she was here, so she was down here a couple hours later, helping people.

- An older woman asked me for a book, and it was up high on the shelf, and I said, "Well, it's up on that shelf," and I said, "I can get you a ladder, but I won't climb it because I just had a baby."

And she went, "When, like a couple, three weeks ago?"

And I said, "No, two hours and 15 minutes ago."

- [John] Keren's barely missed a day in 44 years.

It's that steady presence, and a billboard on the highway that have kept the customers coming back year after year.

- When I first came in here, I fell in love with this place.

- Thank you, and I'll see you again.

I've gotta get down this aisle, but that's a whole 'nother day.

- I know, that's fun.

I love the books.

I love the building.

I love the customers, and that's why I say pinch me.

I get to do this every day.

- [John] It's a chapter in her life she doesn't plan to close anytime soon, because her father's big dream is hers now.

- Something brings her here every day, you know?

Her dad was taken too soon, and so every single day, I think she is following in those footsteps, and chasing that.

- [Ken] Eventually, every person in the west would know that there's a great, big, wonderful used bookstore outside of Missoula.

- It's become what he envisioned 49 years ago.

I think he'd be really, really pleased with it.

- Customers have years of browsing ahead.

That's because Keren still has hundreds of unopened boxes of books her father purchased decades ago.

Books are also a part of our next interesting stop in Gardiner.

(upbeat music) It's the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center.

Their mission is to document and preserve the park's natural and cultural resources, as well as make them accessible to the public.

Staff rotate temporary exhibits in the lobby so people get a glimpse of the vast collection.

Behind the scenes, the archives contain millions of records.

The library has more than 20,000 books, and the museum has over 700,000 diverse objects.

It's a great addition to the park experience, and visitors never know what they might get to see.

We felt the same way when we drove to a spot suggested by one of our viewers.

It's not something you expect to see by a county road in Montana's Golden Triangle.

(compelling music) - Well, how great that we're standing in the shadow of this massive structure that was intended to be an anti ballistic missile ABM site.

It's so big you get a great view, and in fact, it's almost nicer not to be close to it, because you don't see all the graffiti that's on it.

Well, this is Ken Robinson, and I wrote Cold War Montana.

The US knew that the Soviet Union was building extensive anti ballistic missile capabilities to protect their intercontinental missiles, so we had to keep up with those Joneses.

It was just so controversial, but they finally got enough funding to get it started about 1970.

It was a massive project.

They estimated about $100 million per site.

What was completed here took 23,000 cubic feet of concrete, and over 6 million pounds of rebar are embedded in this, and yet it's only two stories of what would've eventually have been a five story structure.

(car whooshing) Can you imagine the dramatic impact on a town of 2,500 I think Conrad had at that time?

So the Army was beginning to expand the schools in Conrad.

They'd build a big park.

They were beginning to plan for hundreds of housing units east of Conrad.

And oh, by the way, while all this was happening, the US and the Soviet Union were in serious negotiations by the early 1970s over an anti ballistic missile treaty, so by the time the treaty was agreed to in May of 1972, one of the sites was 85% complete.

This Conrad site was only about 15% complete, so you can guess which program they continued on.

With the treaty requiring a shutdown here, it was impractical to tear down this monster.

Just the amount of concrete and rebar that would've had to be buried or hauled off wasn't wasn't practical, so they took the easy way out, which was to leave it, and it's a useful reminder, I think, for Montanans and visitors from anywhere of the Cold War.

It's a relic of the Cold War.

- Some locals still refer to it as the million dollar mistake, mistake being the nice word we can use on TV.

And in current dollars, it's closer to 400 million.

The government did eventually sell the land back, so the building is now on private property.

If you're in Gardiner, and heading down the appropriately named Park Street, you'll notice the businesses are only on the north side.

That's because the Yellowstone Park boundary actually comes right to the sidewalk.

Looming at the end of the street is the iconic Roosevelt Arch.

In 1903, officials felt the park lacked a suitable entrance with sufficient grandeur, so over the course of six months, the 50 foot high arch was built.

It was not intended to honor President Theodore Roosevelt.

He just happened to be vacationing nearby, and was asked to speak at the dedication.

The arch and the road obtained official status on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Our final story examines another historic structure in Montana.

We travel to the Flathead Indian Reservation, to a place with a painful past.

It's a beautiful building that will always be a work in progress.

- I've been going to church here ever since I was born.

When I hear the pews moving or crackling, or whatever they're doing, creaking, that's the spirits of all of those other people, native and non-native alike, coming here, or the angels.

- I was brought here when I was six.

When I came here, I had to have an interpreter when I went to school here.

I had a hard time here, you know?

Ursulines, they didn't wanna speak in our language.

- [John] For Salish elders, Johnny Arleen, and Shirley Trahan, this iconic church holds distinct memories.

They see the building differently.

The artistic structure is more than 130 years old, and it desperately needed restoration.

(lively organ music playing) The project lasted more than four years, and cost about $1.2 million, mostly paid for by generous parishioners.

The restoration started with meticulous cleaning.

Along the way, they repaired 25,000 square feet of surface.

They fixed thousands of linear feet of cracks in the plaster, and eventually, they created about 100 unique stencils.

- [Greg] Perfect, just like that.

- [John] They used the latest restorative techniques on this ornate piece of history.

- This is an incredible project.

It's a really important cultural asset to this community.

- [John] For more than 30 years, Greg Marsters has worked around the country, restoring historically significant buildings.

He assembled a talented team of 25 people that included his daughter Celena.

On this day, she's working on one of the 58 murals in the church.

They were painted in 1904 by the community cook with no formal training, Brother Joseph Cariano.

The murals are similar to a dry fresco, which made them fragile, and a challenge to restore.

Celena had to be an invisible artist.

- It's funny, because like, people wanna be recognized for their work, but if I do my like, very best job, nobody will even know that I was here, because you can't see it.

In perfect in painting, you can't tell that it's even there.

- [Greg] So when you hit the UV light, all of these purple areas are repaired.

Now, future conservators who encounter this work and try to do future repairs will know what we've done.

- You can see their restoration.

You can see the care they're taking to not redo, but to restore.

Restore someone else's work is a pretty amazing talent.

They're not just workers, they're artists.

(choir singing solemn song) - [John] Throughout the project and pandemic, the church continued to function.

During the next phase of the restoration, there were more discoveries to be made.

In 1891, more than 200 Native Americans worked on a building.

130 years later, Greg was about to find something very few people had seen, because it was 50 feet above the church floor.

On the main beam across the top of the vaulted ceiling, the workers left a maker's mark of sorts.

Greg noticed sets of tiny buffalo hoofprints in gold leaf.

- Every unexpected discovery of original work is like, it's like Christmas morning for a little kid.

That had to have been something that was significant to them, and that they did specifically to have it be there as part of the energy of the building, like a blessing.

- [John] That energy was always intended for everyone, a place where natives and non-natives gather to worship, but those two worlds collided.

An Indian boarding school, run by the Ursuline nuns was next door, and utilized the church.

Combined, they left multi-generational scars on the very people who invited the Christians into the valley.

Johnny Arleen was a student there, and for many reasons, he drifted away from the church, but eventually, he had his own restoration.

- It took a while.

Finally put my two worlds together, no difference, you know?

We always had creator, (indistinct) they called him, and God, you know?

- The people know that we're remorseful.

That being said, that doesn't excuse the pain that they might have suffered, or definitely the pain their ancestors suffered, particularly our indigenous brothers and sisters who attend church here, and the ones who are disappointed over the years of the church, and don't come anymore.

How do we support them?

- [John] Shirley still comes to church on special occasions, just not quite as often.

She said she's happy to see it returning to the beauty she remembered as a child.

- I would be very sad if they had not restored those pictures.

- [Greg] All right, here we go, everybody.

- [John] The final refurbished pieces were put in place.

- [Greg] Go ahead and let it back gently.

- [John] The angel returned to her perch.

She looks out over the congregation, each person seeing the place differently.

- [Greg] Knowing that it's going to be here for a long time is rewarding.

- [Johnny] It was pretty hard.

A lot of hard times.

It was way later in my adult life that made a connection.

- [Shirley] I am hoping to stay here, praying here, singing these hymns here for the rest of my life.

- Just like the spiritual element, the physical restoration is an ongoing process.

The next step, a restorative treatment for the outside of the church.

Well, we've run out of time for this episode.

We'd like to thank the good folks of Gardiner, and especially the Chamber of Commerce and Executive Director, Terese Petcoff.

Gardiner offers year round access to Yellowstone National Park.

They're excited for more visitors, but ask for your patience, and to plan ahead for your trip.

We're always planning for more interesting stories, and we appreciate your help.

If you've got a story idea, follow us on Facebook, and message us there.

Or you can write to us at Backroads of Montana, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, 59812.

We've got more great stories to tell, and two lanes to travel.

I'm John Twiggs, and we hope to see you out on the Backroads of Montana.

- [Announcer] Backroads of Montana is made possible with production support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, the Big Sky film grant, and the University of Montana.

♪ From mountain peaks to prairie lands ♪ ♪ The places I have known ♪ And I'm bound to ramble ♪ Yes, I'm bound to roam ♪ And when I'm in off the road now, boys ♪ ♪ Montana is my home ♪ Coming in off the road now, boys ♪ ♪ You know I'm heading home