WEST GLACIER – Exactly one century after President William Howard Taft signed the legislation creating Glacier National Park, nearly 1,000 Montanans gathered here on May 11 to celebrate a landscape they love, along with the wisdom and stewardship of the generations who helped preserve it.
“Today, we recognize this anniversary, acknowledging that the story of this landscape is much older than a mere hundred years, and that the story will continue well beyond this significant event,” Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright told the crowd gathered beneath a tent outside the West Glacier Community Building. “Each of us has a personal connection with Glacier National Park – Glacier connects us to the very core of our nature.”
Cartwright’s remarks underscored the essence of the Glacier Park Centennial, which celebrates a place that remains preserved yet ever changing, and public while invoking an intensely personal devotion in those who wander its landscape.
“The archaeological record says that we’ve been on this ground for 14,000 years,” Steve Lozar, a council secretary for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said. “You’ve all done a great job preserving our mountains and valleys.”
The Blackfeet called what is now Glacier, the “Backbone of the World,” and tribes east and west of its mountains hunted and learned its topography long before the arrival of white settlers.
“Today, by standing together, we’re all stronger. Today, the Salish and Kootenai people feel welcome here,” Lozar added. “We hear the songs of our ancestors on the wind.”
Lieutenant Governor John Bohlinger praised the foresight of the public officials who managed to create the park system for protecting some of the America’s most important places.
“Had Congress not established the national park system, places like Glacier would have been sold to the highest bidder,” Bohlinger said, noting the area’s designation as a Forest Reserve 10 years before it became the 10th national park, and its establishment as an International Peace Park in 1932. That same year also marked the completion of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, arguably the park’s biggest attraction.
Bohlinger recalled his first visit to the park 65 years earlier when he stayed at Lake McDonald Lodge, and his experience on a more recent trip there.
“We sat on the porch drinking in the intoxicating grandeur of this special place,” he said, “and once again I was 10 years old.”
“We looked out on a landscape that is unchanged and that is as inviting as ever,” Bohlinger added.
Yet many aspects of Glacier’s landscape have changed drastically over the last 100 years. The glaciers that give the park its namesake and have carved its geologic features have shrunken and may disappear altogether within a decade as temperatures warm. The forests along Glacier’s slopes are drier, with wildfires growing in intensity and frequency. Such massive alterations belie the concept of Glacier Park as a landscape impervious to change.
Similarly, while many of the best known man-made structures in the park, like its signature chalets and lodges, may be designated National Historic Landmarks, the layout of the park’s buildings, roads and bridges has changed drastically since its early days.
Following the Centennial Ceremony and the obligatory cutting of the 100th birthday cake, retired park service employees led visitors on walking tours to historically significant sites.
Cultural Resource Specialist Lon Johnson told of the West Lakes building, which served as the first official headquarters. Prior to that, however, it was the site of a saloon owned by George Snyder, who delighted in antagonizing officials displeased at having a rowdy bar be the first thing visitors saw upon entering the young Glacier National Park. The first head of the National Park Service, Stephen Mather, eventually managed to purchase the homestead and donate it to the park in 1917.
Closer to the banks of the Middle Fork, Landscape Architect Jack Gordon described the history of the Belton Bridge, (several hundred yards upriver from the current west entrance), as one of several attempts to create passages to the park foiled by floods, though the concrete arch originally erected in 1920 remains as the oldest existing structure on what would eventually become the Going-to-the-Sun Road.
Other park officials discussed the history of early public transportation in the park. Another discussed how fire fighting was organized in Glacier for its first 20 years, making clear just how much the park was and remains, an evolving work in progress – not only by park service employees, but by the many volunteers who contribute their time and energy.
Mary Grace Galvin’s family is among the few with homesteaded property on Lake McDonald, and she has led several associations and boards dedicated to improving Glacier Park.
“I’ve been coming here since I was 3 years old,” Galvin said. “There’s a real sense of love and proprietorship; being a landowner, we feel a shared responsibility with stewardship.”
Galvin’s favorite part of the park? The trails – especially the tough ones.
“One of my biggest smiles was the day I came up over Stony Indian pass for the third time with a full pack,” she said, “and I was still alive!”
A few feet away, a group of students from West Glacier elementary were eating lunch. Though young, many of the kids have also already formed their own personal bonds with Glacier Park, feelings likely to deepen as they grow older.
“I like riding the red Jammer busses,” Amanda Bevan, 12, said. “When the top is down and the wind is flying in your hair, it seems like you’re seeing everything from a different view.”