COLUMBIA FALLS — A project years in the making has reached the finish line as Big Creek Outdoor Education Center up in the North Fork has been fully restored.
Since 1988, Glacier Institute, the education partner of Glacier National Park and the Flathead National Forest, have used Big Creek Outdoor Education Center for school field trips and summer camps.
“All with the idea of getting people to know about and care about the outdoors,” said Glacier Institute Executive Director Anthony Nelson.
For close to 40 years, more than 50,000 kids in northwest Montana have visited the Big Creek Outdoor Education Center in the North Fork, fostering connections with the natural world.
“We have people stop by all the time, roll in the driveway and want to tell us their stories about how much this place means to them,” said Nelson.
After decades of use, the education center needed major repairs to remain in service.
“We started kind of assessing the whole site and realizing wow we’re in pretty bad shape, so we had to do something, it was almost like an emergency campaign,” added Nelson.
Nelson said they started a $1.7 million capital campaign to restore the outdated buildings.
“Different then maybe a lot of campaigns whereas we were raising money, we were doing construction as we were going, and so we’ve been working on this project for 3 and a half years.”
Upgrades included removing outdated floors, installing modern plumbing and replacing crumbling foundations.
That included temporarily moving the main building to dig out a foundation and a basement underneath it.
“And so, everything that we did here was done under the lens that when you drive in today that it looks the same as when it did 30, 50, 90 years ago.”
Restoration Big Creek was completed thanks to more than 350 community donors.
“And just tons of people whether they were able to give $10,000 or $10, every donation really counted and really mattered to us,” said Glacier Institute Director of Development Mady Rigg.
Rigg said the new campus will serve the Flathead community for generations to come.
“I’m just looking forward to hosting lots of kids out here and seeing everyone with their huge smiles on their faces.”
