[The photos and video for the Maki site show the reconstruction of this historic homestead cabin at the Upper Swan Valley Museum in November 2018. The two historic photos are of Jamar and Elsie Maki milking cows and Jalmar Wirkkala, a USFS ranger who later lived in the cabin].

Jalmar Maki was one of nine Finns who came to the Swan Valley in 1916 to homestead. He filed his claim along the Swan River north of Cold Lake Road and moved there in 1917. The Finns lived in tents with their families while helping each other build cabins. Jalmar and his wife Elsie had no children. By the early 1920s, Jalmar had built a homestead cabin, barn, hayshed and wagon shed. 

The Maki Cabin, which was reassembled in 2018 at the Swan Valley Museum, was probably built in the early 1920s. It may have been used partly as a sauna. The Finns typically built “wash houses, “bath houses” or “sweat houses,” sometimes before building their homestead cabins. Another Finn, Jalmar Wirkkala, who was not a homesteader, lived in the Maki Cabin, so it may have also served as a bunkhouse. Wirkkala was a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service and an accomplished trapper and hunter. 

Wirkkala was locally famous for killing a notoriously large grizzly bear nicknamed “Gordon Bill,” purported to weigh half a ton. Wirkkala and his Airedale dog Gyp encountered the bear feeding on a mountain goat carcass while traveling over Gordon Pass during a routine trip into the “South Fork” (Bob Marshall Wilderness). Gyp attacked the bear and Wirkkala shot it in the forehead at close range when the grizzly charged. 

Maki was known as a “master at traditional Scandinavian construction.” The Maki and Beck cabins “…were built of hand-hewn timbers, cornered with dovetail joints. The roof rafters and gable ends were hand-hewn, also. Horses provided the power to drag and lift the logs, using cables and a gin pole.” 

To make a living, the Finlanders trapped, built log homes or milked cows when they weren’t working at sawmills outside the valley. Many of the families raised milk cows and sold cream to creameries in Missoula or Kalispell. The milk cans were hauled by the mail carrier, who came through the Swan once or twice a week, first by wagon and later by truck. 

Trapping may have been the most lucrative way for the Finns to earn cash in the valley. Yet it’s likely Maki augmented his income by building everything from summer cabins to large dairy barns.

Credits and Sources:

Montana Voices of the Swan, Suzanne Vernon.

Wirkkala bear story, Rangers, Trappers, and Trailblazers, John Fraley.