Howse House
By editor
Somers, Flathead County, Montana, 1903
The Great Northern Railway, having decided that a railroad without ties was a poor sort of enterprise, established a tie plant at the north end of Flathead Lake in 1901. This operation required a manager, and the manager required a house, which is how the Howse House came to be built in 1903. It was a substantial two-story residence, designed to impress upon the local population that the railroad was a permanent and prosperous institution, even if the town of Somers was little more than a collection of shacks and sawdust.
The house was named for its first occupant, a man whose name was spelled Howse but pronounced "House," a linguistic redundancy that must have caused no end of confusion for the postal clerk. Mr. Howse oversaw the production of millions of railroad ties, a task that involved turning perfectly good trees into rectangular blocks of wood and soaking them in creosote until they were toxic enough to withstand the elements and the insects. It was a dirty, smelly business, but it paid well, and the Howse House stood as a clean, white monument to the profits of industrial chemistry.
The architecture was a blend of whatever styles were fashionable at the time, with a prominent porch where the manager could sit in the evening and survey his domain, listening to the soothing sounds of the sawmill and the gentle waft of creosote on the breeze. The interior was finished with the finest woods the company could procure, which was only fitting for a man whose entire livelihood depended on the destruction of forests.
As the years passed, the tie plant eventually closed, the railroad moved on to other concerns, and the town of Somers settled into a quiet retirement. But the Howse House remained, a sturdy reminder of the days when timber was king and a man's worth was measured by how many trees he could turn into railroad ties in a single day.
See also
- Howse House at Somers, Flathead County (Montana Historical Society, erected 1995)
- [Somers Tie Plant] - The industrial operation that necessitated the construction of the house.
