How It All Started

The Lodge sits 1000’ above the village of Leavenworth on a parcel that was cleared in the late 1800’s to raise alfalfa for the logging & mining horses and mules that entered the upper valley from Old Blewett Pass via Mountain Home mountain.

“New” chapters to the Mountain Home story have been told to us over the past few years.  In the Fall of `99 an 81 year old Renton resident phoned to enlighten us that when she read our tag line of “a place where children are seldom seen, but often created” in the newspaper, she had to chuckle. She was one of the first to be “created” on the mountain in a home at the base of our property that was destroyed by a fire when she was 5.  Her father and mother, Arthur and Elizabeth Chase, had raised Irma here as a young child in the 1920’s!  A recent dinner guest recalled his memories as a young boy of his family renting a small cabin situated by the cherry trees in our orchard for the summer, while his Father worked in the mill set up above us to log timber from the mountain.  We enjoy gathering these memories of the mountain.  

The Lodge property was not homesteaded until the late 1960’s by Bill & Emma Jean Bradshaw.  The Bradshaw’s began construction of the Lodge building in the late 1970’s as their private home.  Bill built most of it by himself!  Quite the pioneer spirit to say the least!  We have been pleased to met Bill and his new wife Patty from AZ, as well as their relatives who have stopped in throughout the years to check things out.  The home was purchased from the Bradshaw’s in the early 80’s and then had interior construction completed as a Lodge.  It was opened as Mountain Home Lodge in May, 1984.  We purchased the Lodge in December of 1994 and remodeled and updated it in 1995.  Our Cabins were opened the fall of 1999.  

Our purchase of the Lodge was after an exhaustive 2 1/2 year search for the “ideal” property.  Brad is a professional advertising photographer and Kathy was a VP for First Interstate Bank in CA.  We’ve exchanged our corporate lifestyles for a unique opportunity to pursue a dream we so often talked about.  After researching close to a hundred properties in the West to find our ideal property, we hope you too find Mountain Home Lodge truly “a thousand feet closer to heaven”!