Parks' Fly Shop - History

History

In the late 1940s, Merton J. Parks (1916-1970) was an executive in the paper industry in Cloquet, Minnesota. Merton's avocations however were fly fishing and fly tying. He was an accomplished trout fisherman in the trout streams along the north shore of Lake Superior. His fly tying skills were such that many of his friends encouraged him to tie flies for them. Therefore, Merton started a small, part-time mailorder fly tying operation.

In the summer of 1947, Merton took his family, including his four year old son, Richard, on a trip to Montana and Yellowstone National Park. It was on this trip that Merton met Dan Bailey of Livingston, Montana. By early 1952, Merton had decided to quit the paper industry and move his family and fly-tying business to Montana. With the help of Dan Bailey, Merton established Parks' Fly Shop in the back of a small store on W. Park Street, Gardiner, Montana in the summer of 1953.

The small fly shop remained at the W. Park Street location for less than a year. In early 1954, Merton moved the business to a small store on S. 2nd Street that had been relocated from the abandoned town of Cinnabar, Montana a few miles north of Gardiner. By the early 1960s, Merton moved the business into a more permanent structure, its present location at 202 S. 2nd Street, next to the old store, sharing the building with the U.S. Forest Service offices in Gardiner.

The fly shop was one of the first in the region to offer guided float fishing on the Yellowstone River. In 1955, Merton guided his first float clients in a war surplus rubber raft, but quickly transitioned to wooden rowboats and eventually aluminum jonboats. In 1978, Richard began using fiberglass drift boats or dories with his float clients. Although the fly shop has continued its mail order fly business to the present day, especially for locally produced custom flies, its mainstay was always and continues to be servicing local and visiting anglers on the Yellowstone River and Yellowstone National Park waters. Since its opening, flies and fly fishing tackle have changed significantly and Parks' Fly Shop helped its clients transition from bamboo fly rods, to fiberglass, to today's graphite rods. When the shop was opened, fly lines were made of silk and leaders of silkworm gut. Flies were tied with fur, feathers, yarn and floss. Today's flies are innovative combinations of fur, feathers and a myriad of synthetic materials.

Merton's son, Richard, grew up in Gardiner and became an accomplished professional fly tyer and fly fishing guide while working for his father in the business. In 1966, Richard graduated from Montana State University with a B.A. in History. After college, Richard spent three years in the U.S Army as a Landing Craft Coxswain serving in Virginia and South Vietnam. After his military service, Richard pursued a graduate degree, but economics kept him from completing it while he ran the fly shop in Gardiner. After Merton died in 1970, the fly shop remained with Merton's wife until 1985, when Richard assumed ownership of the business. He still operates it today.