Glacier National Park is located in the U.S. state of Montana, bordering the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Glacier National Park contains two mountain ranges, sometimes referred to as the southern extension of the Canadian Rockies mountain ranges, with over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem, spread across 1,584 mi (4,101 km), is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem", a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 mi (44,000 km). The famed Going-to-the-Sun Road, a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, traverses through the heart of the park and crosses the Continental Divide, allowing visitors breathtaking views of the rugged Lewis and Livingston mountain ranges, as well as dense forests, alpine tundra, waterfalls and two large lakes. Along with the Going-to-the-Sun Road, five historic hotels and chalets are listed as National Historic Landmarks, and a total of 350 locations are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Glacier National Park borders Waterton Lakes National Park in CanadaÑthe two parks are known as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, and were designated as the world's first International Peace Park in 1932. Both parks were designated by the United Nations as Biosphere Reserves in 1976, and in 1995 as World Heritage sites.
History
According to archeological evidence, Native Americans first arrived in the Glacier area some 10,000 years ago. The earliest occupants with lineage to current tribes were the Salish, Flathead, Shoshone and Cheyenne. The Blackfeet arrived around the beginning of the 18th century and soon dominated the eastern slopes of what later became the park, as well as the Great Plains immediately to the east. The park region provided the Blackfeet shelter from the harsh winter winds of the plains, and supplemented their traditional bison hunts with other game meat. Today, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation borders the park in the east, while the Flathead Indian Reservation is located west and south of the park. When the Blackfeet Reservation was first established in 1855 by the Lame Bull Treaty, it included the eastern area of the current park up to the Continental Divide. To the Blackfeet, the mountains of this area, especially Chief Mountain and the region in the southeast at Two Medicine, were considered the "Backbone of the World" and were frequented during vision quests. In 1895, Chief White Calf of the Blackfeet authorized the sale of the mountain area, some 800,000 acres (3,200 km), to the U.S. government for $1.5 million. This established the current boundary between the park and the reservation.
While exploring the Marias River in 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition came within 50 miles (80 km) of the area that is now the park. A series of explorations after 1850 helped to shape the understanding of the area that later became the park. George Bird Grinnell came to the region in the late 1880s and was so inspired by the scenery that he spent the next two decades working to establish a national park. In 1901, Grinnell wrote a description of the region, in which he referred to it as the "Crown of the Continent", and his efforts to protect the land make him the premier contributor to this cause. A few years after Grinnell first visited, Henry L. Stimson and two companions, including a Blackfeet Indian, climbed the steep east face of Chief Mountain in 1892.
In 1891, the Great Northern Railway crossed the Continental Divide at Marias Pass (5,213 ft/1,589 m), which is along the southern boundary of the park. In an effort to stimulate use of the railroad, the Great Northern soon advertised the splendors of the region to the public. The company lobbied the United States Congress, and in 1900, the park was designated as a forest preserve. Under the forest designation mining was still allowed, but was not commercially successful. Meanwhile, proponents of protecting the region kept up their efforts, and in 1910, under the influence of George Bird Grinnell, Henry L. Stimson and the railroad, a bill was introduced into the U.S. Congress which redesignated the region from a forest reserve to a national park. This bill was signed into law by President William Howard Taft on May 11, 1910. From May until August, the forest reserve supervisor, Fremont Nathan Haines, managed the Park's resources as the first acting superintendent. In August of 1910, William Logan was appointed the Park's first superintendent.
The Great Northern Railway, under the supervision of president Louis W. Hill, built a number of hotels and chalets throughout the park in the 1910s to promote tourism. These buildings, constructed and operated by a Great Northern subsidiary called the Glacier Park Company, were modeled on Swiss architecture as part of Hill's plan to portray Glacier as "America's Switzerland". Vacationers commonly took pack trips on horseback between the lodges or utilized the seasonal stagecoach routes to gain access to the Many Glacier area in the northeast.
The chalets, built between 1910 and 1913, included Belton, St. Mary, Going-to-the-Sun, Many Glacier, Two Medicine, Sperry, Granite Park, Cut Bank, and Gunsight Lake. The railway also built Glacier Park Lodge, adjacent to the park on its east side, and the Many Glacier Hotel on the east shore of Swiftcurrent Lake. Louis Hill personally selected the sites for all of these buildings, choosing each for their dramatic scenic backdrops and views. Another developer, John Lewis, built the Lewis Glacier Hotel on Lake McDonald in 1913Ð1914. The Great Northern Railway bought the hotel in 1930, and it was later renamed Lake McDonald Lodge. Some of the chalets were in remote backcountry locations accessible only by trail. Today, only Sperry, Granite Park, and Belton Chalets are still in operation, while a building formerly belonging to Two Medicine Chalet is now Two Medicine Store. The surviving chalet and hotel buildings within the park are now designated as National Historic Landmarks. In total, 350 buildings and structures within the park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including ranger stations, backcountry patrol cabins, fire lookouts, and concession facilities.
After the park was well established and visitors began to rely more on automobiles, work was begun on the 53 mile (85 km) long Going-to-the-Sun Road, completed in 1932. Also known simply as the Sun Road, the road bisects the park and is the only route that ventures deep into the park, going over the Continental Divide at Logan Pass (6,646 feet, 2025 m) at the midway point. The Sun Road is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1985 was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Another route, along the southern boundary between the park and National Forests is U.S. Route 2, which crosses the Continental Divide at Marias Pass and connects the towns of West Glacier and East Glacier. During the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps assisted in the development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds. The increase in motor vehicle traffic through the park during the 1930s also resulted in the construction of new concession facilities at Swiftcurrent and Rising Sun, both designed for automobile-based tourism. These early "auto camps" are now also listed on the National Register.
In 2003, wildfires on the western side of the Continental Divide burned 10% of Glacier National Park. There were also extensive fires in the surrounding forests.
Park management
Glacier National Park is managed by the National Park Service; park headquarters is in West Glacier, Montana. The National Park Service has the smallest staff of any major federal agency, yet oversees over 84 million acres (340,000 km). Visitation to Glacier National Park averages slightly less than 2 million visitors annually, however a relative few venture far from main roadways and hotels.
Glacier National Park has an operating budget of $11,885,000 for fiscal year 2006. Most of this budget is used to provide a minimal number of staff and to make minor improvements to structures and roadways that are in immediate need of repair. More than 60% of the employees are employed for only a few months per year during the summer. Only 20% of the park's annual funding comes from entrance and campground fees. The remaining funding comes from federal tax dollars, grants and donations. According to a report presented to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1999, the cost of deferred maintenance, not including repairs to roads and hotels, was $77 million. Restoring the five hotels in the park by bringing them up to the current fire codes and performing stabilization work, would cost another $100Ð135 million.
The mandate of the National Park Service is to '...preserve and protect natural and cultural resources'. The Organic Act of August 25, 1916, established the National Park Service as a federal agency. One major section of the Act has often been summarized as the "Mission", "...to promote and regulate the use of the...national parks...which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." In keeping with this mandate, hunting is illegal in the park, as are mining, logging and removal of natural or cultural resources. Additionally, oil and gas exploration and extraction are not permitted. In 1974, a wilderness study was submitted to congress which identified 95% of the area of the park as qualifying for wilderness designation. Unlike a few other parks, Glacier National Park has yet to be protected as wilderness, but National Park Service policy requires that identified areas listed in the report be managed as wilderness until Congress renders a full decision."
In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the park in 2010, major reconstruction of the Going-to-the-Sun Road is underway, and temporary road closures are expected in the 2007 season. Some rehabilitation of major structures such as visitor centers and historic hotels, as well as improvements in wastewater treatment facilities and campgrounds, are expected to be completed by the anniversary date. Also planned are fishery studies for Lake McDonald, updates of the historical archives and restoration of trails.
Geography and geology
The park is bordered on the north by Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, and the Flathead Provincial Forest and Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park in British Columbia. To the west, the north fork of the Flathead River forms the western boundary, while its middle fork is part of the southern boundary. The Blackfeet Indian Reservation provides most of the eastern boundary, and the Lewis and Clark and the Flathead National Forests form the southern and western boundary. The remote Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex is located in the two forests immediately to the south.
The park contains a dozen large lakes and 700 smaller ones, but only 131 lakes have been named. Lake McDonald, St. Mary Lake, Bowman Lake and Kintla Lake are the four largest lakes. Numerous smaller lakes, known as tarns, are located in cirques formed by glacial erosion. Some of these lakes, like Avalanche Lake and Cracker Lake, are colored an opaque turquoise by suspended glacial silt, which also causes a number of streams to run milky white. The lakes of Glacier National Park remain cold year round, with temperatures rarely above 50 ¡F at their surface. Cold water lakes such as these support little plankton growth, ensuring that the lake waters are remarkably clear. The lack of plankton, however, lowers the rate of pollution filtration, and pollutants have a tendency to linger longer. Consequently, the lakes are considered environmental "bellweathers" as they can be quickly affected by even minor increases in pollutants.
Two hundred waterfalls are scattered throughout the park, however, during dryer times of the year, many of these are reduced to a trickle. The largest falls include those in the Two Medicine region, McDonald Falls in the McDonald Valley and Swiftcurrent Falls in the Many Glacier area, which is easily observable and close to the Many Glacier Hotel. One of the tallest waterfalls is Bird Woman Falls, which drops 492 feet (150 m) from a hanging valley beneath the north slope of Mount Oberlin. Bird Woman Falls can be easily seen from the Going-to-the-Sun Road.
The rocks found in the park are primarily sedimentary in origin, having been laid down in shallow seas over 1.6 billion to 800 million years ago. During the formation of the Rocky Mountains the Lewis Overthrust, commencing 170 million years ago, moved an enormous region of rocks three miles (4.8 km) thick and 160 miles (257 km) long, eastward more than 50 miles (80 km). This resulted in older rocks being displaced over newer ones, and today the overlying Proterozoic rocks are over 1.4 billion years older than the underlying Cretaceous age rocks.
One of the most dramatic evidences of this overthrust is visible in the form of Chief Mountain, an isolated peak on the edge of the eastern boundary of the park rising 4,500 feet (1,372 m) above the Great Plains. There are seven mountains in the park over 10,000 feet (3,048 m) in elevation, with Mount Cleveland at 10,466 feet (3,190 m) being the tallest. Appropriately named Triple Divide Peak sends waters towards the Pacific Ocean, Hudson Bay, and Gulf of Mexico watersheds, and can effectively be considered to the be the apex of the North American continent, although the mountain is only 8,020 feet (2,444 m) above sea level.
The rocks in Glacier National Park are the best preserved Proterozoic sedimentary rocks in the world, and have proved to be some of the world's most fruitful sources for records of early life. Sedimentary rocks of similar age located in other regions have been greatly altered by mountain building and other metamorphic changes, and consequently fossils are less common and more difficult to observe. The rocks in the park preserve such features as millimeter-scale lamination, ripple marks, mud cracks, salt-crystal casts, raindrop impressions, oolites and other sedimentary bedding characteristics. Six fossilized species of Stromatolites, which were early organisms consisting primarily blue-green algae, have been documented and dated at about 1 billion years. The discovery of the Appekunny Formation, a well preserved rock stratum in the park, pushed back the established date for the origination of animal life a full billion years. This rock formation has bedding structures which are believed to be the remains of the earliest identified metazoan (animal) life on Earth.
Glaciers
Glacier National Park is dominated by mountains which were carved into their present shapes by the huge glaciers of the last ice age; these glaciers have largely disappeared over the 15,000 years. Evidence of widespread glacial action is found throughout the park in the form of U-shaped valleys, glacial cirques, aretes and large outflow lakes radiating like fingers from the base of the highest peaks. Since the end of the ice ages, various warming and cooling trends have occurred. The last recent cooling trend was during the Little Ice Age which took place approximately between 1550 and 1850. During the Little Ice Age, the glaciers in the park expanded and advanced, although to nowhere near as great an extent as they had during the Ice Age. Coincidentally, the park region was first explored in detail near the end of the Little Ice Age and a systematized survey began in which the number and size of glaciers was documented on maps and by photographic evidence. Much of this late 19th century work, however, was undertaken to lure tourism into the region or to search for mineral wealth, not out of a particular desire to document glaciers.
During the middle of the 20th century, examination of the maps and photographs from the previous century provided clear evidence that the 150 glaciers known to have existed in the park a hundred years earlier had greatly retreated, and in many cases disappeared altogether. Repeat photography of the glaciers, such as the pictures taken of Grinnell Glacier between 1938 and 2005 as shown, help to provide visual confirmation of the extent of glacier retreat.
Source: Wikipedia
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This Glacier National Park map is made with USGS point data and 1-6 year old digital National Park data. In some areas some features may be named wrong, or missing due to the age of the USGS data. Viewers should consider the map as reference only.
