Columbia Falls mural opens a window on the town's past

COLUMBIA FALLS - In downtown Columbia Falls, next door to the barbershop and across the street from the grocery, Charlie Russell sits in an upstairs window, playing poker with the boys.

He's there when you go by in the morning, still there when you head home at night. In fact, he never misses a day and never shows his cards.

On the sidewalk out front, the town's founder rests on a bench and boys hang around hoping he'll drop a coin when he gets up to leave.

But he never leaves.

He, like Russell, is a character in a historical mural splashed across the local Masonic Building. Russell and Mr. Talbot face east, overlooking a Nucleus Avenue neither would likely recognize.

Around the corner, the Saurey family faces south, across Fifth Street, looking out from the tent city that was the original Columbia Falls and straight into the parking lot of First Citizens Bank.

"You have to wonder what they'd think of all this," said Jane Renfrow, who, along with a small committee, made the mural project a reality.

She calls it "honest history," but there's no doubt a generous helping of art involved, as well.

"It's beautiful," said Bruce Christensen, who runs a health shop a couple doors north of the mural. "It's just soŠ real."

It's real, in part, because the people in it are real, the scenes captured from old photographs. They are all the more striking given the stark juxtaposition of modern life - a Ford F-150 parked in front of horse loggers, a bright yellow fire hydrant in front of the old-time horse-drawn fire truck.

The project started, Renfrow said, with a 2002 meeting of the "Which Way Columbia Falls" group.

"They split us up into committees," Renfrow said, and she was joined by Sarah Dakin, Cindy Shaw, Ron Miller and Shirley Reynolds to explore both town history and downtown beautification.

"We wanted to start with something simple," Renfrow said.

"Something easy, cheap and high-impact," Shaw added.

"A museum was more than we wanted to take on," Renfrow continued.

"It had to be accessible to everyone, a real part of the downtown," Shaw said.

And so the notion of the murals was born. The local Chamber of Commerce offered the use of its non-profit bank account to collect donations and threw in some cash from its recent rummage sale. The Masons obliged with the outside of their block building. Plum Creek Timber Co., whose sprawling log yards cap the north end of town, tossed in a $1,500 grant. Grandmothers gave, as did school children.

"It was pretty easy," Renfrow said of raising money. "Everyone wanted to be involved."

They picked local artist Clark Heyler, she said, in part because he's local, in part because he's an experienced mural artist. Heyler's scenes add color to Whitefish, Kalispell, Eureka and other communities in the region.

But if picking Heyler and his partner, Maria Vekkos, was easy, Renfrow said, picking the images was not.

They began with a theme for the south side of the building - homesteaders around the time of the town's founding in 1891. And after sifting through stacks of historic photos, they picked three images: the sawyers, the horse loggers (the horses seem to be charging right out onto Fifth Street, so realistic is the depiction), and the Saurey family.

Robert Saurey Sr. and his wife, Mary, were among the first to homestead in what would be Columbia Falls. The photo that anchored the mural was taken on Independence Day, 1891, while the family posed in front of their tent camp.

For the east wall, the committee landed in the 1920s, when the town was really becoming a town and its founders were finally relaxing, watching their community mature.

There's the Indian woman who once owned the land, and the man whose company bought the townsite. There's colorful old Joe Cosley, rogue and gentleman, the French-Canadian trapper turned park ranger and, some say, poacher.

And, of course, there's Montana artist Charlie Russell, who used to come to town for poker games when staying at his house on nearby Lake McDonald.

Renfrow knows about Russell's card playing days because she spent hours with Dorothy Jordan Brading, whose father built the town's first electric lumber mill. And there's young Dorothy, pulling a wagon down the boardwalk in front of the E.H. Snyder Drug Store, Mr. Russell looking down from his window above, Mr. Talbot watching her approach from his bench out front.

(In fact, Dorothy and Talbot's stories were tangled together to the end, or, at least, to Talbot's end. Talbot, as Columbia Falls' founder, insisted that he meet all the babies born in his town. As a young girl, Dorothy brought her newborn brother to meet Talbot, as was the custom. But Talbot was on his deathbed, and the nurse turned Dorothy away. Talbot heard what was happening, however, and called her back. She was the last person from town to see him alive.)

But history notwithstanding, if you look closely enough you'll find a bit of the present mixed in with the past. The horses pulling logs are branded with the Shriner symbol, a nod to the folks who gave the town the "canvas." And the logs behind are stamped with the Plum Creek corporate name.

And then, of course, there's "Randy's barbershop," an honor that literally brings tears to barber Bocksnick's eye. (Randy Bocksnick's barbershop is in the building next door, a clip joint he's been running for 40 years.)

Renfrow is committed to history and to getting history right, but she also understands the continuity of community, the connections between past and present that make a place a place. She moved around a lot as a kid, she said, and it wasn't until she settled in Columbia Falls that she came to understand the connections between what a place was and what it is.

And as a teacher, of course, her eye was always on what it could be.

"It's important," Renfrow said, "that kids feel like they belong to something. This story is their story."

Too often, she said, today's school budgets are too slim to afford luxuries like field trips to historic places. But every place has a history, and what better history to learn than the history of your place?

The murals don't tell the whole tale, Renfrow admitted, but they do offer a window into the past that can catch a student's imagination. It's an easy-access gateway into the sense of belonging she believes is so important.

For others on the committee, it was enough to simply honor history for history's sake.

And for Shaw, especially, dressing up downtown played a major role.

But what's interesting is that none of them talk much about drawing people downtown. They don't talk the Chamber line about tourism and business and revitalizing aging retail districts.

Instead, they say they created the murals for the folks who live here. The intended audience is Mr. and Mrs. Columbia Falls, and the Columbia Falls' kids.

"This is for the people of this town," Renfrow said. "Knowing our history makes it a more special place to live. And having it presented like this makes it a more beautiful place to live, too."

Copyright © 2009 Missoulian