George Darrow, Bigfork leader, passes away

Longtime Bigfork civic leader and environmental policy pioneer George Darrow died Wednesday in Kalispell. He was 90.

Darrow and his wife, Elna, who died in 2009, were consummate volunteers for decades in the Bigfork community where they owned and operated Kootenai Galleries for many years. He was a driving force behind the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts and led an effort to raise nearly $1 million for the center in the mid-1980s.

“He was a pillar of Bigfork,” said Bruce Solberg, former Bigfork Chamber of Commerce director. “He was always an influential guiding force, there to lend an ear and give really good advice.”

Bigfork attorney Randy Snyder recalled how the Darrows “gave sacrificially of their time.

“He and Elna were a constant, visible face and voice of support for this community,” Snyder noted.

Several Bigfork leaders recalled that Darrow was a man of his convictions and always spoke his mind about the topic at hand.

“He was a really determined man and strong in his beliefs,” Solberg said. “If he had an opinion he would definitely share it.”

Sen. Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, said Darrow was “uncompromisingly passionate” about his promotion of Bigfork as a destination resort village. He was equally passionate about Montana and his work as a conservationist and wilderness advocate.

As a state legislator, Darrow in 1971 wrote and led the passage of the Montana Environmental Policy Act, landmark legislation that still guides the planning of development projects with a focus on environmental impacts.

Darrow served as a Republican lawmaker representing Yellowstone County in both the Montana House and Senate from 1967 to 1974. Right out the chute as a new legislator, Darrow was the chief sponsor of the Montana Water Policy Act in the 1967 Legislature. He remained a vocal advocate for clean water.

As an elected legislator in 1972, Darrow couldn’t participate in Montana’s Constitutional Convention as one of its 100 citizen delegates, but he followed the process intently, Swan View Coalition Chairman Keith Hammer noted in a 2012 article he wrote about Darrow in the Conserve Montana publication.

Hammer recalled how Darrow gave him a copy of the Montana Constitution with certain phrases highlighted such as this one: “All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment ... In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize the corresponding responsibilities.”

The Darrows were active in the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce when Hammer first became active in trying to protect the Swan Range and secure a wilderness designation for the Swan Crest. He noted how the Darrows persuaded the Chamber to support the wilderness proposal.

“George has been at the cutting edge in arguing for preservation of the incalculable value pristine forests and waters contribute to local economies,” Hammer said.

In 1992 Darrow testified before a U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee, telling federal lawmakers: “One of the sustaining attributes of the Bigfork area and indeed, the other forest inter-linked communities of the Flathead Valley, are the ramparts of the Swan Range rising 4,000 feet above the valley floor within the Flathead National Forest. The entire snow-capped Swan Crest from Columbia Mountain through the Jewel Basin and into the Bob Marshall Wilderness provides the high-quality watershed, recreation and wildlife habitat that underlie the Flathead economy.”

Darrow came by his interest in the natural world through his farming and geology backgrounds. He was born in Osage, Wyoming, at the time an oil-field boom town 60 miles south of the Montana border. His father, following another oil boom, led the family to Lewistown a few years later.

He earned degrees in geology and economics from the University of Michigan, serving in the Navy between his two courses of study. He worked for several companies in oil and groundwater exploration after moving to Billings in 1949 and was a consultant until moving to the Flathead Valley in 1976, the same year he and Elna were married.

The Darrows operated an extensive farm operation on two sites in the Bigfork area, growing grain and hay and raising livestock. They restored an old homestead near Bigfork, with an 1894 cabin serving as Darrow’s office.

Flathead Audubon honored Darrow, one of its longtime members, in 2013 with its Conservation Achievement Recognition award for his many years of service.

In a 2002 interview with the Daily Inter Lake, Darrow, then 77, talked about the couple’s desire to keep volunteering as long as they were able. Retiring — or even slowing down — “would be dull,” he said. “There are too many interesting things to do.”