Person:Alexander Beaton (1)

From the Kalispell (MT) Daily Inter Lake, April 30, 1950:

"SCOTTY BEATON, GLACIER FAMED LOOKOUT, TAKEN BY DEATH Alexander (Scotty) Beaton, oldest lookout in Glacier National park both in years and point of service when he retired last year, died yesterday- morning in Kalispell General hospital. He spent 20 years in the U.S. Forest and National Park services and was known to thousands of local people and tourists from all parts of the United States simply as "Scotty." He celebrated bis 75th birthday last August and was retired on a pension after watching Glacier National park grow from a wild, uninhabited region to become one of the most popular of national parks in the nation. He made his home in the park about two miles north of Polebridge which he and his wife established when he entered the National Park service at the beginning of the '20s. Scotty was the object of state-wide stories last winter when a Whitefish doctor traveled by plane and skis into the interior to come to his aid during a period of sickness. BORN IN SCOTLAND Not far from his 40-acre scenic home is the lookout station on Numa ridge whore he served for years as fire lookout. A native of Aberdeen. Scotland. Scotty came to the United States in 1891, when he was only 17. After spending a few months in North Dakota he came here to Demersville, which later moved farther north to become Kalispell. Describing himself as a jack-of all-trades, Scotty told at a dinner in his honor last fall of how he went to Libby where he met his wife and of his experiences as a cook for the U.S. Forest Service during the days when this area was wild. In 1916 he went to Portland, Ore., where he tried a four-year stint as a shipbuilder. But, he loved the mountains of western Montana, and in 1920 he moved to his home in the north fork section of Glacier park where his his father-in-law had homesteaded. HELPED BUILD STATION He helped build the Numa ridge station, the first Lookout in the park which he said was only a tent in those days. At present the station is 14 feet square with a glass-enclosed second story for observing fires. One of Scotty's proudest claims was that in all his 20 years as lookout he never missed spotting a fire which had broken out in his area and never reported a false one. He is remembered in park circles for the time he asked the United States government for a flag, but was to!d that flags were not provided to lookout stations. He wrote back saying he was traveling to Canada soon and would bring back a Canadian flag. Before he could start, however, an American flag came by return mail — compliments of the U.S. government. He had thousands of friends who had taken to his good natured way of explaining the wonders of the park. Every year at Christmas he received hundreds of cards from people in all parts of the United States and gifts arrived throughout the year. He was what one ranger called, "The park's best loved character." Surviving are his wife, Minnie, sisters in Calgary and Aberdeen, Scotland, and several nieces and nephews. The body is at the Johnson Funeral home where services will be conducted Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock by the Reverend P. Griffiths, rector of the Christ Episcopal church. Interment will he in the Conrad Memorial cemetery." [THE DAILY INTER LAKE, Kalispell, Montana 4/30/1950]

1.   Alexander Beaton's page at Find A Grave (w/ picture): http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=28860992