Couples reopen Northern Lights

The Northern Lights are open for the summer.

Two married couples recently purchased the Polebridge business and reopened it June 30.

Co-owner Joyce O’Hara said the Northern Lights Saloon, a restaurant located next to The Mercantile, hopes to get a liquor license by the second week of August.

Joyce and her husband, John, teamed up with Bob and Kathy Reiswig to purchase the Polebridge eatery after it was closed in December by previous owner Heather Kaufman.

The plan is for Northern Lights to be open until late September or early October.

Joyce O’Hara, who moved with her husband from Athol, Mass., said she wanted to get back to Polebridge. “I had been in a stressful medical office job,” she said.

She returned to the town, located off the beaten path west of Glacier National Park, after a 27-year hiatus. The O’Haras have been summer residents of Polebridge for some time, but Joyce hadn’t been involved at Northern Lights since 1983 when she gave birth to her second child.

The O’Haras ran the store with John and Karen Gray for two years beginning in 1977. They stepped away after their first child was born in 1979, came back in 1981 and leased the business from Karen (Gray) Feather, and backed away again with the birth of their second child in 1983.

Bob and Kathy Reiswig got involved after the O’Haras asked their son, Stuart Reiswig, if the restaurant was for sale.

Stuart Reiswig and his fiancé, Flannery Coats, purchased The Mercantile from Dan and Deb Kaufman, Heather’s parents, in June 2009.

“Our son was here and we just sold the business [a pharmacy] in Spearfish [S.D.],” Bob Reiswig said. “Now I’m the maintenance man. It’s pretty relaxing.”

The couple have upgraded all of the restaurant equipment and “repainted everything.”

The business is open daily from 4 to 9 p.m. and offers specials on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, including pizza on Fridays.

Everything is homemade, Joyce O’Hara said, including the desserts, such as apple and rhubarb pie, turtle cheesecake, turtle brownies and raisin bars. The turtle desserts have a topping made of pecan, caramel and chocolate.

John O’Hara has owned and operated a business, Northern Lights Log Homes, in Polebridge since 1977. But the O’Haras didn’t actually meet the Reiswigs until the O’Haras stopped in Spearfish while moving from Massachusetts.

“We downgraded our living conditions and upgraded our living atmosphere,” Joyce O’Hara said of their decision to sell their house and move to a cabin in Polebridge.

“We all just want to live in the middle of nowhere. We were ready for changes in our lives. We got ‘em, massive changes,” she said, smiling.

Northern Lights Saloon, 255 Polebridge Loop Road, is located north of Columbia Falls off the North Fork Road. The phone number is 406-888-9963.

Reporter Caleb Soptelean may be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at csoptelean@dailyinterlake.com.