Family story of homesteading North Fork part of talk
Daily Inter-Lake | UPDATED 3 weeks, 4 days AGO
Zach Block holds the book he published from his grandfather's writings. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
The saga of a family attempting to survive in wilds of the North Fork is the topic at this month’s meeting of Northwest Montana Westerners, a local history group. The event is 7 p.m. Monday, April 20, at the Northwest Montana History Museum.
Zach Block will tell the story of his grandfather, Dan Block, and grandmother, Gerane, who in 1946 left comfort behind to build a mink ranch near Trail Creek, located just below the Canadian border and on the west edge of Glacier National Park. They drove from Milwaukee in 1934 pickup, and arrived with forest roads still snowbound.
What began as a romantic frontier dream gradually reveals the harder truth beneath America’s mythology: belief alone cannot overcome geography, weather, economics, or loss, notes Zach Block.
Fur prices collapse. Winters lengthen. A stillborn child shatters hope. The homestead fails. But the family prevails, forever shaped by their wilderness experience.
Dan Block laboriously typed up a lengthy memoir, only for it to linger in a box of family mementos. Zach stumbled across the document after his grandfather’s death and assembled it into a book he titled "Trail Creek: A North Fork Saga."
The presentation starts at 7 p.m. on the second floor of the museum, at 124 2nd Ave. East in Kalispell. Cost is $5 for the general public, with members and youths under 16 admitted free.
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Secluded saga: Memoir tells story of couple who homesteaded in the North Fork