Landmark eagle taken for cleaning

Something is missing from the skyline near West Glacier.

On Thursday, the giant bald eagle sculpture perched at the entrance of West Glacier businessman Paul DeToni's property was loaded onto a semi-truck trailer. The 5,000-pound eagle has stood sentinel on the entrance gate on U.S. 2 just outside West Glacier for seven years.

It was removed Thursday with a crane. DeToni said it had been taken down for cleaning.

He declined to say where the eagle would be cleaned, only that it was a "sculpture-cleaning place" in a confidential location. Frontier Transportation, the Kalispell-based trucking company that hauled the sculpture away, said the bird was bound for Bemidji, Minn.

The eagle ruffled feathers in 2004, when the Flathead County Planning Office told DeToni that the sculpture would have to go. Because the eagle was so high on the gate, it rose well above the park's skyline, a violation of Middle Canyon zoning regulations. The zoning rules in that area prohibit anything on commercial properties from breaking the skyline as viewed from the highway.

Then-planning director Forrest Sanderson told the Inter Lake in 2004 that DeToni bought the property - and the sculpture - well after the regulations were put into place in 1994. Other businesses in the area have signs or buildings that break the skyline, but they were in place before 1994 and therefore exempt from the zoning regulations, Sanderson said then.

The planning office told DeToni that he had several options, including moving the sculpture so it sat below the skyline, requesting an expansion of the commercial business district around West Glacier, which has a different set of zoning standards, or having his property revert to residential use.

When asked Thursday about the zoning issue, DeToni said there was no issue.

"The zoning people, they've been great. There's no problem with the zoning," he said.