Glacier National Park · Lake McDonald Valley
Lake McDonald Lodge
John E. Lewis's Swiss-chalet hotel of 1913–14 on Lake McDonald; lodge rooms, cabins, the Cobb House and Snyder Hall are all historic.
- Built
- 1913–14Main lodge built 1913-14 by John E. Lewis as the Lewis Glacier Hotel; opened June 1914. Eleven log cabins near the lodge date to 1907 with two more from 1918. Snyder Hall dates to 1911 and the Cobb House to 1918.
- Style
- Swiss Chalet
- Architect
- Kirtland Cutter (Cutter & Malmgren, Spokane)
- Type
- Lodge
- Rooms
- 82
- Area
- Lake McDonald Valley
- Credentials
- National Historic Landmark; Inside a National Register historic district; Historic Hotels of America member
The story
Land speculator John E. Lewis hired Spokane’s Cutter & Malmgren to design a Swiss-chalet hotel replacing the 1895 Snyder hotel on Lake McDonald, and the Lewis Glacier Hotel opened in June 1914. The Great Northern Railway’s Glacier Park Hotel Company acquired it in 1930, and it was renamed Lake McDonald Lodge in 1957. A 1964 flood damaged the lobby fireplace. The NPS announced in July 2013 that Lewis’s 1918 family home, the Cobb House, and the 1911 assembly building, Snyder Hall, had been rehabilitated as guest lodging.
The ghost story
Former Red Bus driver Robert Lucke told author Karen Stevens that a woman in old-time clothes was seen repeatedly at the lobby windows by a security man and a night auditor in summer 2008, that guests heard arguing from empty balconies and that a night auditor felt fingers run through her hair. The same 2013 Daily Inter Lake report notes the other side: Lucke once staged a sheeted ghost for lodge tours, and manager Todd Ashcraft said the lodge appeared to be free of ghosts.
Source: dailyinterlake.com
Good to know
- Breakfast: available
- No elevator
- No pets
- Address: West Glacier, MT
Things to do
Tours in Glacier National Park
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Sources (4)
Last verified October 2026. Details change; confirm with the inn before you book.