First Presbyterian Church of Whitefish
By editor
Whitefish, Flathead County, Montana
Soon after the Great Northern announced a Whitefish division point, Presbyterian missionary E. M. Ellis and Kalispell minister Alexander Pringle reached the site by bicycle and rowboat. Pringle canvassed logging and railroad camps for cash and labor. By December 1903 the town had its first church. The congregation moved several times; by 1919 it had outgrown another building and worshiped in the Masonic Lodge while planning a permanent sanctuary.
Physician W. W. Taylor led a building committee whose drawings Spokane architects Rigg and Vantyne barely altered. They chose Romanesque Revival—masonry, heavy arches, a Norman square tower entrance—as less ostentatious than Gothic for a Protestant church. A high-ceiling daylight basement was sized for a full basketball court. Community members donated art-glass windows; two, purchased for $700 by Japanese railroad workers, honor Elizabeth Peck, who taught the men English. The windows commemorate both Peck and Whitefish’s once-thriving Japanese community.
A church that began with a rowboat visit ended up with a tower, a gym, and stained glass paid for by immigrant railroaders. That is a more complete Whitefish origin story than the ski brochures usually print.
See also
- Duncan Samson Block at Whitefish, Flathead County
- Great Northern Railway Passenger and Freight Depot and Division Office at Whitefish, Flathead County
- Hori Cafe Building at Whitefish, Flathead County
