Highway Hasn’T Changed Murray’S Pace

Pans and plates practically flew and the beer flowed as standing-room-only customers chatted cheerily in Murray’s Sprag Pole Tavern last weekend. It was the historical town’s first Memorial Day holiday since the new highway up Thompson Pass opened last August.

It was busy as usual for the Sprag Pole’s weekend traffic since the long-awaited road opened for the season May 1.

Out on Main Street, a matted, mustard-colored dog wandered lazily from the north side to the south to check out a freshly discarded candy wrapper. A few hundred feet up the street, kids played keep-away with a basketball in front of the new community center.

It was business as usual for Main Street, too. The only cars there were in front of the taverns.

Despite the higher traffic count from the new road, Murray has the best of both worlds. At its downhill end in Murray, the road skirts the town to which it connects with a single exit to Main Street. Now a dead-ender, this curbless street is much quieter than when it was the old road up the pass, making Murray a thoroughfare, which it has been for more than 100 years.

“We wanted the new highway off Main Street - to keep the ambiance of the town,” said Connie Roath, who owns the Sprag Pole with her husband Lloyd. “Dogs can still lie out there. It’s how we want it; it’s how visitors want to see it.”

The base of business still comes from the few dozen people who choose to live in scattered houses in Murray, which has been almost silent since the gold rush at the turn of the century. Visitors are attracted to the place because of its quaintness. Main Street’s stores, many empty for decades, are dated by 12-foot ceilings and square facades.

The Sprag Pole’s draw is its extensive museum, free and captivating with genuine relics of the region’s past.

Once hooked, customers return for the inexpensive, home-cooked food, beer and friendly chatter. The same is true for the Bedroom Goldmine Tavern, which capitalizes on an authentic mine in the basement.

The oldest building still in use may be the 1884 Murray House, a bed-and-breakfast inn. Owner Claudia Childress said May was so busy she didn’t have time to advertise, which she intends to do in the Thompson Falls newspaper.

Down the road at Babin’s Grocery, owner Richard Babin said traffic has definitely increased.

“We’re kind of famous for our ice cream, so they always stop in here,” he said. “We get a lot of people from Idaho on their way over the pass.”

Connie Roath said the paved road has tripled the number of people coming to Murray.

“People come from Montana just to eat,” she said. “Many weekends it’s standing-room only. Lloyd and I used to handle it. Now we had to hire three more people.”

The draw isn’t just Murray. The new highway replaces nine miles of rutted, rocky, often muddy dirt road that wound steeply from Murray to Thompson Pass. The road travels alongside a stream bed whose banks were formerly bare boulder dredgings from the mining days. Now the boulders are covered with topsoil and grass to create a park-like drive.

For travelers headed east, Thompson Falls is 23 miles down the east side, which has been paved for many years and waiting for Idaho to finish its long-promised project, which took 2-1/2 years and $10 million.

Thompson Falls offers a riverside golf course, antique and art shops, restaurants and a self-guided walking tour of rocky-cliffed islands separating its 86-year-old dams and spectacular powerhouse hewn from rock.

Further travel options for day-trippers are to loop east or west from Thompson Falls along Highway 200 in the deep Clark Fork River Valley and return to Idaho. The east loop meets with Highway 28 and connects to Interstate 90 at St. Regis. The west loop winds around Lake Pend Oreille to Sandpoint.

Thompson Pass also is an option for travelers headed to Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park. Despite being five miles shorter than the St. Regis cutoff from I-90, the faster way remains the freeway.

Originally the plan was to keep the road over the 4,852-foot elevation pass open year-round. That seems impractical with the minimal snow-clearing equipment available. In addition, many Montana residents prefer the road closed so the snowmobile route remains open.

“Our people like to snowmobile down to Murray to eat. It’s fantastic to go over that pass in the moonlight,” said Tom Eggensperger, publisher of the weekly Sanders County Ledger newspaper in Thompson Falls. “However, Idaho people can’t really get anywhere snowmobiling down the Montana side because they run out of snow before they get to town.”

He said if the pass was open in the winter, perhaps an alternate snowmobile track could be used. Montana skiers would be interested in using the Idaho ski areas, he said.

Meanwhile, the old matted dog doesn’t know the difference, the Murray businessmen do, and the Montanans are waiting for their share.

“We’ve seen some increases and lots of interest,” Eggensperger said. “If you build it, they will come.”

Idaho finally did.