Pete Darling, noted Columbia Falls community leader, dies at age 87

Community leader and friend to many, Pete Darling died at his home Tuesday. He was 87.

Darling came to Columbia Falls in 1929 he was just 9 months old. The historic Half Moon Fire was racing over the top of Teakettle Mountain and his father, Charlie, went to fight it.

His father didn’t come home until October. That winter, they didn’t live in a house — there were none available to rent — they lived in a tent in what is now Pinewood Park.

Darling grew up in Columbia Falls during the Depression and World War II. 

Picture a town with about a half-dozen sawmills, dirt streets and a watering trough for horses in the town square.

There was a depot at the end of what is now Nucleus Avenue and many people traveled by train. A single gas engine train, the Galloping Goose, carried mail, and passengers back and forth from the mainline south to Kalispell. Darling rode that train on a regular basis by himself at the age of 10.

Early on, Charlie didn’t make a lot of money and the family moved often.

“If you were renting a house for $10 a month and you could find one for $8, you moved,” Darling said in a 2014 interview. “He must have got it down to a $1 because we moved a lot.”

There were large tracts of vacant land in Columbia Falls back then, where the Cedar Drive subdivision overlooks the Flathead River, Darling hunted deer as a young man.

He spent his professional career working in the woods and was a fire control officer for the Hungry Horse Ranger District before he retired.

Darling oversaw the operation and upkeep of the Woodlawn Cemetery for years and was a longtime board member. He was a founding member of the Wildcat Athletic Endowment Fund. He also spearheaded a project to build rocking horses for the Toys for Tots program. Darling built dozens of the horses on his own time and his own money over the years. In 2014, the Columbia Falls Lions Club named him its “Citizen of the Year” award.

Darling was a walking encyclopedia of town history and was quick with a smile and story.

There will be a visitation for Pete on Monday Feb. 8 at Columbia Mortuary from 5 to 7 p.m. A funeral service will be held on Tuesday Feb. 9 at Columbia Mortuary at noon. Burial will take place at Woodlawn Cemetery.