Georgetown Lake is going through such a transformation. The manmade reservoir that provided water and power for Anaconda’s smelters and weekend retreats for its legions of workers has hit the trophy market.
“The working person will never be able to afford this again,” said Bill Nicholls, a former Montana Power Co. welder. “Ever since the article came out about the governor being here, it’s opened up everybody’s eyes to the changes.”
“It’s not a cabin for us - it’s our primary residence,” Schweitzer said during a Missoula visit last week. “Nancy gets to spend more time up there than me. I hope to get up there every other weekend.”
It’s also quite a difference from the tiny log cabins and trailer homes that stylized Georgetown Lake’s shores for most of the 20th century. The Anaconda Co. owned much of the land around the lake, with the Forest Service holding the rest. Both institutions offered cheap leases on small plots for vacation homes. The typical rate was $200 to $400 a year.
There were lots of restrictions. The Forest Service prohibited year-round occupancy, effectively shutting the lake down between September and May. The Anaconda Co. discouraged permanent dwellings, and many of the residents went along to keep their property taxes down.
When the Anaconda Co. closed up shop in the 1980s, a group of Butte real estate developers bought most of its Georgetown holdings. They in turn sold them to a wide range of vacation-home buyers. The lodgepole cabins started being replaced by fir log mansions.
“When I first started working for the Forest Service, I knew just about everybody who had a cabin on this lake,” said Ed Puccinelli, who spent 33 years taking care of the lake’s campgrounds. “Now I can’t keep track - they’re coming in and going out so fast.”
That’s despite services falling from two public marinas to one after Denton’s Point closed last year. Puccinelli pointed to a couple of large houses up the shore from Denton’s Point where he’s seen occupants living year-round. For most of its first century of existence, Georgetown Lake only hosted ice-fishing day-trippers in the winter. Now commuters are rounding the lake roads to Anaconda and Butte every day.
Schweitzer wasn’t the first person to build an eye-catching home on Georgetown Lake, and he certainly won’t be the last. The shoreline is spotted with real estate signs offering lots and cabins for sale. And the road rumbles with dump trucks, flatbeds and cement trucks heading for construction sites.
After living in Whitefish for 20 years, Schweitzer said he hopes his new home won’t grow as quickly as his previous lake community did. Georgetown lacks a town or commercial hub closer than Philipsburg or Anaconda. While that should keep traffic down for a while, it also blurs the focus on who’s in charge of change.
The boundary separating Granite and Deer Lodge counties goes right through the lake. While Deer Lodge County has fairly extensive zoning codes, Granite County has a more wide-open development stance. Projects like Badger Bay have still different rules.
“I can throw a stone from my house to Deer Lodge County,” said Schweitzer, who’s on the Granite County side. “But my development is much more restrictive than county zoning. It’s important to have setbacks 200 feet from the shore. Some of those old cabins are built right on the lake. We have to have a designed and engineered septic system. That’s a small price to pay to continue to have the lake as one of the best fisheries in Montana.”
Keeping Georgetown Lake healthy will remain a challenge. It sits where Flint Creek used to run through a hayfield before the Granite Bi-Metallic Mining Co. dammed it just above a steep chasm. It’s only about 50 feet deep at its deepest, yet it boasts a see-’em-from-the-beach trout fishery that draws anglers for miles around.
One of Puccinelli’s former tasks in the 1960s was to visit all the lake outhouses and drop dye pellets down the holes. Then he’d flush the pit with water and see if any of his dye appeared in the lake. If it did, that meant sewage was getting into the lake’s already weedy bottom and might choke out the fish.
“At one time, one out of every 18 fish caught in Montana was caught in this lake,” Puccinelli said. “There’s still a lot of big fish in here. But it’s so shallow that the jet boats get in the weeds and their motors burn up.”
Bill Nicholls used to rent a place behind the St. Timothy’s Church complex for years. He first came to Georgetown Lake while working weekends at Discovery Basin Ski Area. He’s since built his own cabin in 1993 on Whispering Pine Lane, up the road from some of the oldest summer homes on the lake.
“They must have been pretty short people back then,” Nicholls joked about the old log shacks. “Those roofs aren’t really tall.”
Across the big field out his front window, he can see big excavators hollowing out space for new foundations on the hillside.
“They’re building some pretty decadent places,” Nicholls said. “But they’ll see. The ground’s real rocky, and the winters are too long.”
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Chris wrote on Sep 22, 2008 7:01 PM: