Sunny skies welcomed an unusually warm day on Feb. 5 at the intersection of BIA Route 3 and U.S. Highway 89 on the Blackfeet Reservation. But a chilly breeze kept things from being temperate as Charlene and Bob Burns surveyed the cleared space of what had, for more than three decades, been the Cattle Baron Supper Club. The structure burned to the ground in an electrical fire on a very windy night on Jan. 14.

Charlene had a helper pour water and scrub a circular portion of the concrete slab that was the floor of the Cattle Baron, revealing painted horsemen in a circle.

“That’s Running Eagle,” she said, “surrounded by warriors with her waterfall in the middle.”

The Medicine Wheel, painted by the late John Webber, was the centerpiece of the restaurant, and the waterfall refers to Running Eagle Falls in Glacier National Park. She is honored as a woman warrior in Blackfeet tradition.

“The hard part was losing the history and art, although it’s still alive in us,” she said. “That was a building; we didn’t have insurance, but we didn’t owe anything on it except the utilities. It’s coming back through our kids in a corporation called Thunder Lodge Enterprises LLC. They’re planning for a restart. We have eight kids between us … and we’re guiding them. It’s different for us two, and that’s the lesson for us now. We already had it, and now it’s time for the kids and grandkids to learn Blackfeet hospitality.”

The property at the turnoff to Many Glacier in Glacier National Park is ideal for any business, and it is equally immersed in family and local history.

“Our kids are planning another Cattle Baron that includes our family history,” Charlene explained. “Bob’s grandmother, Mae, set up a store/post office here in the early 1900s when the allotment came out, so this is Mae’s property. Mae and her husband, Bill, were rangers in the park, and before that Mae took 27-horse pack trains from St. Mary to Belton before there was a road in the early 1900s.”

“Mae was blind,” Bob said of his grandmother’s being stricken with glaucoma in 1927, following her husband’s passing in 1923. “She spoiled me pretty bad.”

“Bob got dandelions for wine for her,” Charlene said, “and rode with her on horseback with her behind him as he described the scenery. 

“From 1954 to 1974 seven different people owned [the property]. Bob’s dad bought it in 1973 and sold it to Bob on July 1st, 1974.”

That was the beginning of the Babb Bar which evolved as a result of Bob and Charlene’s embracing Blackfeet culture and tradition.

“The transition from the Babb Bar to the Cattle Baron came when Bob was in trouble with the law,” Charlene said. “He got together with the Canadians and joined their traditional societies, and then it became a passion of his to share what he’d learned with the world.

“It was more than a notion to go from the wild Babb Bar’s reputation to making sure people felt safe and welcome to dine with us. We had to guarantee their safety and build that reputation. I remember telling people that still wanted to sow wild oats that they could do that anywhere, but there was hardly anywhere to bring a date or to take your mother out to dinner.”

That aim hasn’t changed, and the family is ready.

“I think we can do it,” Charlene said. “We have to learn to work with our kids, and they have to learn to work together when they’re all so different. We have fly fishers, outfitters and teachers who have to think collectively. The Cattle Baron actually housed two complete restaurants. Bob is getting ready to do the same thing with the food truck he is building for this season’s tourists while we all work on the new Cattle Baron. It will be like a beer garden and a food truck court. The state won’t allow us to use the catering license without that license having a home. They only gave us a year to build so we put a tiny Babb Bar on that spot. A beer garden and food truck on that patio and the very spot will give Bob and me a business and an income while the family will be building back a beautiful Cattle Baron and motel. Of course it won’t be like the old one. That one was just appraised recently at $5 million. But it will be unique, one-of-a-kind, and it will be a continuation of our story that began with Mae.”