Izaak Walton Inn
About this property
The Izaak Walton Inn is a historic inn in Essex, Montana, United States. It was originally built as the Izaak Walton Hotel in 1939 by the Addison Miller company under contract from the Great Northern Railway as a soup kitchen and lodgings for railway workers. The hotel was also originally envisioned as a potential official southern gateway to Glacier National Park, hence its size, but World War II intervened and that plan never materialized. The inn is served by Essex station, the only request stop on Amtrak's Empire Builder route. The Tudor Revival-style inn is named after Sir Izaak Walton, the English writer and fisherman. Its location, Essex, was originally named Walton. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. At Essex, the railway workers asked for some kind of accommodation. About 400 people lived in the town of Essex in the 1920s, and some workers were able to obtain houses there. However, many intermittent workers were forced to seek shelter in wall tents, abandoned railroad cars and other improvised structures, even during the winter. Before the inn was built, there was only a "beanery", a restaurant with no lodging facilities (built in 1910 and 1920s; both structures were destroyed by fire). The inn has 33 rooms within the inn itself, with some other space in refurbished cabooses, EMD F45 Diesel Locomotive 441, etc. It has been privately owned since the 1950s. In December 2022, the inn was purchased for US$13.5 million by Washington-based hospitality company LOGE Camps (pronounced "lodge"). LOGE entered bankruptcy in 2026, closing the inn.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Izaak Walton Inn listed on the National Register?
Izaak Walton Inn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 17, 1985.
What type of historic resource is Izaak Walton Inn?
Izaak Walton Inn is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Izaak Walton Inn?
The period of significance for Izaak Walton Inn is recorded as the industrial era.
Can I research the history near Izaak Walton Inn?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Izaak Walton Inn will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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