Crews from Liquid Gold Well Service of Cut Bank last week finished capping and closing one of the oldest oil wells in the state along Kintla Lake in Glacier National Park.

The Park Service decided to have the well capped and plugged after it was found to be leaking gases.

The well was drilled in the early 1900s prior to Glacier becoming a national park in 1910.

The company built a wooden ramp and platform around the well to reduce impact on nearby vegetation as the well is in the wilderness area of Glacier near the head of the lake.

While the rig that was used to cap the well was initially described as a barge, it looked more like just a large boat. The Hungry Horse News sent a photographer to the site by kayak to photograph it in operation a few weeks ago.

Crews said the well cap would actually be located subsurface when the job was completed.

The company did make some helicopter flights to haul out equipment from a helipad located off Trail Creek outside the park.

Longtime North Forker Don Sullivan said he did file a complaint to the Flathead County Planning and zoning office over the helipad, but didn’t expect any enforcement action, since one isn’t specifically written into the North Fork zoning.

A helipad is not a permitted or conditional use in the North Fork Zoning area.

His greater concern, he said, was a landowner creating a permanent helipad on a property. Sullivan claimed the North Fork zoning needed penalties written into it for breaking the zoning laws, rather than just general penalties under the current zoning structure.

But the county did contact the company, according to Jared Schroeder, code compliance supervisor for the Flathead County Planning Department.

He said the company advised him that they would use the helicopter two times for the operation.

“The first flight was to transport the equipment needed for the Kintla Lake project. The flight time was only a couple of hours. The second flight was to transport the same equipment out of the Kintla Lake project area, which again required only a couple of hours of flight time.

“When we met with the contractor, we advised them that if they have any additional work within the park, the Park should obtain a government zoning exemption prior to conducting any work,” Schroeder said in an email to the Hungry Horse News.