Glacier Park residents join lawsuit to oppose illegal home construction in McDonald Creek

For more than 63 years, Monica Jungster has lived and worked in Apgar Village in Glacier National Park, where she grew up 400 feet from the banks of lower McDonald Creek. The daughter of a World War II veteran who served in the 10th^t Jungster, who lived in the Mountain Division before moving to Montana, recalls how in 1955 her parents bought a postage stamp-worth of land within the park and built the Montana House Regional Craft Shop, where their family was raised in the back room of the shop.

Since then, floods and fires have transformed the landscape around Apgar Park, and a dramatic increase in visitor numbers has led to radical changes in park management policies.

Meanwhile, Jungster has quietly resisted change, choosing to protect her family’s original business mission and defend the pristine natural resources that, for her, are both a private birthright and a public privilege. After the 2003 forest fires nearly reduced Apgar Village to ash, Jungster replaced the store’s wooden roof with a metal one. The building’s slats are now goldenrod-colored, and the sign is different. Still, not wanting to disrupt the rustic character of the neighborhood, Jungster has largely avoided modification, even as she embraces the changes around her.

But when California couple John and Stacey Ambler built a three-story home on a 0.05-acre plot of private property on the banks of Lower McDonald Creek, a stone’s throw from Apgar Village, Jungster and her neighbors decided they couldn’t accept the change and decided to voice their displeasure.

“Because all private landowners in Montana have certain rights to private property and the attendant responsibilities, the Amblers had to take responsibility for what was required by their construction project on private property on lower McDonald Creek,” Jungster said last November in comments to a state hearing examiner who determined the property owners had violated Montana’s most important streambed law when they built their home without a permit — a ruling the couple is challenging. “Public records indicate that Glacier Park ordered them to comply with county and state regulations. They failed to do so.”

The judge presiding over the hearing, Laurie Zeller, a former Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) bureau chief appointed by the Flathead Conservation District (FCD) to arbitrate the dispute, sent the case back to FCD, whose board ruled that the couple must remove the house and repair the riverbed by April 1, 2024.

Instead, the Amblers filed lawsuits in state and federal courts, arguing that FCD had overstepped its authority by ordering the house removed. As the legal saga drags into the park’s second peak summer of visitation, the unfinished house remains visible to gawkers from Camas Road.

But for Jungster and other permanent residents, it’s more than just a public nuisance; it’s an insult.

Last month, Jungster and other residents joined the federal case the Amblers filed against FCD as intervenors, both to support FCD’s position and to represent their own unique views and experiences. Gathering as a group called Friends of Montana’s Streams and Rivers (FMSR), attorneys representing the residents say it’s important for their own sets of unique interests to be represented in a case that will likely be heard by appellate courts.

“The decision to intervene was intended to give a voice to residents who have interests that are somewhat different than the Flathead Conservation District, which has jurisdiction over one of the most pristine waterways in Montana,” Rob Farris-Olsen said in an interview. “These neighbors, like Monica Jungster and others who have spent their lives working and playing in this area, have a unique perspective and want to advocate for the protection of McDonald Creek and ensure that Montana’s constitutional guarantee of a clean and healthy environment is met.”

Since late May, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kathleen DeSoto granted FMSR’s motion to intervene, a flood of briefs and summary judgment motions have been filed outlining legal strategies for both defendants (FCD and FMSR) and plaintiffs (the Amblers).

According to the complaint, the Amblers are trying to establish their right to build a home on the banks of a perennial stream without a permit, which FCD says violates Montana’s Natural Streambed and Land Preservation Act (NSLPA), which governs private activities on public waterways. According to the Amblers, neither Flathead County nor Glacier National Park — two entities they believe should have the final say in the matter — required any permits to begin construction on the property and connect the home to Apgar Village’s water and sewer system.

However, in response to resident complaints, FCD conducted a site inspection in February 2023 and determined that the Ambler family had violated the NSLPA by building on the immediate banks of McDonald Creek and excavating the stream bank to create space for construction, all without obtaining the required 310 permit.

The couple challenged the conservation district’s jurisdiction in the matter and pursued a so-called declaratory judgment process overseen by Zeller, a retired DNRC bureau chief who is an expert in riverbed permits. Zeller’s ultimate finding was that riverbed law applied to the Amblers and that FCD had exercised proper enforcement authority to order the structure removed.

The case is unique, given the project’s location in Glacier National Park, which, when established in 1910, trapped private tracts of land designated by homesteaders before the park was created. Initially encompassing 13,000 acres, many homesteaders sold their property to the National Park Service a century ago, but some remained. Known as an “inholding,” the bill establishing Glacier Park explicitly stated that landowners would retain “the full use and enjoyment of their properties” and that “nothing contained herein shall affect any valid existing claim, location, or entry under the land laws of the United States, or the rights of any such claimant.”

According to Camishi Sawtelle, an attorney representing FCD, in a response to the Ambler family’s federal lawsuit, “The location of the Ambler family’s property does not preclude enforcement of state law, which is fully consistent with the purpose of national parks.”

“Plaintiffs also appear to argue that Glacier National Park regulations do not apply, suggesting that development on private property on the banks of an iconic stream in Glacier National Park is fundamentally unregulated,” according to the motion for summary judgment. “FCD denies this unreasonable motion and asks the Court to grant their motion for summary judgment that the statute applies to the Ambler properties.”

The property at issue in the Amblers’ dispute was claimed by Charles Howes on May 21, 1908. The United States General Land Office granted the property to Howes in 1908, and it has remained privately owned ever since. Therefore, Sawtelle wrote, the provisions of the Glacier authorization act “do not apply to the property at issue in the dispute.”

For Jungster, the corner of Glacier National Park where she has spent her entire life is “a world where the park owners have the privilege of living, of choosing, and of being responsible for the decisions we make while we are here.”

She recalls that during the devastating Flathead Valley floods of 1964, she watched as the lower course of McDonald Creek “flowed backward” into Lake McDonald, “erasing huge sections of the riverbank on the side where the Ambler house now stands.”

“The rental cottage had floated down to the new Camas Bridge, where Park had dropped it off. Part of Mrs. Powell’s white house was hanging over the riverbank, which had been washed away. The old wooden bridge connecting Apgar to the houses on Grist Road was gone, and Lake McDonald filled up just below the second story of the Village Inn Motel,” Junger wrote in her statement to the hearing officer, describing the destruction. “When I walk along the creek now, I can still see the trees falling on that side of the creek and the open cut area being eroded near the Camas Bridge. The 0.05 acres that the Amblers own are probably all that remains of the private lot where Mrs. Powell’s house hung over the riverbank in 1964.”

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