MARY PICKETT - Billings Gazette - 07/09/09

When a road through the heart of Glacier National Park was being planned in the 1920s, one proposal called for 15 switchbacks zig zagging up the steep sides of Logan Creek Valley to Logan Pass.

One critic, Thomas Vint, a young National Park Service landscape architect only four years out of college, said that plan would scar the face of the valley so extensively that it would look like "miners had been there."

One critic, Thomas Vint, a young National Park Service landscape architect only four years out of college, said that plan would scar the face of the valley so extensively that it would look like "miners had been there."

Fortunately, that idea was rejected in favor of Vint's proposed route that gradually climbed the precipitous Garden Wall in a single switchback.

Thanks to Vint's vision, the Going-to-the-Sun Road, even as it undergoes a multiple-year renovation, continues to be among the park's breathtaking attractions.

Permanent human structures such as highways usually run counter to the wild beauty of places like Glacier. But Going-to-the-Sun Road's stone retaining walls, tunnels, arched reinforcements and cascading waterfalls come as close to Vint's goal of preserving the valley's spectacular scenery as a road can.

Vint is one of many people Carol Guthrie writes about in "Glacier National Park: The First 100 Years."

The book, published last year by Farcountry Press, helped kick off the park's centennial celebration.

Guthrie, who grew up all over the West, became enchanted with the park during visits with her father in the 1940s. When she returned to live permanently near Missoula with her husband, Joe Guthrie, she began writing about Glacier. The latest book is her fifth about the park.

People have been coming to the Glacier area for more than 10,000 years. The Blackfeet and Kootenai tribes, which still live nearby, have been here for 1,000 years.

In her book, Guthrie uses the Blackfeet's traditional name for themselves, "Niitsitapi." She also refers to the Piikani, the largest band of Niitsitapi who lived in and near Glacier.

Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition came within 50 miles of what is now Glacier in 1806, according to the park's Web site.

During the first half of the 19th century, the area was a crossroads of American Indians, trappers, mountain men, gold miners, whiskey traders and explorers.

In the 1880s, when James Hill began planning the path of his Great Northern Railway to the West Coast, he hired John Stevens to locate a low-grade pass over the Continental Divide that was known to the Piikani but had eluded white engineers for years.

Stevens finally scouted out 5,220-foot Marias Pass just south of the present Glacier Park, during a bitterly cold snowshoe trek in December 1889. The Great Northern was completed in 1893.

A fascination with American Indians brought others to the Northern Rockies.

By the late 1880s, the Piikani, now living on a reservation that included the east side of what would become Glacier, had been decimated by white men's disease, the near disappearance of the bison, the whiskey trade and Indian wars.

Still, the romance of their traditional life drew Easterners to the West.

Among the most influential was James Willard Schultz, an adventurer who wrote about his travel in the Northern Rockies, including his book "My Life as an Indian." Living with the Piikani, he spoke their language and soaked up Blackfeet legends.

One of Schultz's magazine articles with rapturous descriptions glacier-covered mountains drew the attention of George Bird Grinnell.

Grinnell, an Eastern big-game hunter and naturalist, read an article Schultz wrote in 1885 and immediately caught a train west.

He traveled through Glacier on a big-game hunting trip with Schultz and a Piikani guide, later exploring a large glacier that would become Grinnell Glacier.

That visit started Grinnell's lifelong interest in Glacier and efforts to preserve it, Guthrie said.

In 1907, Grinnell got U.S. Sen. Thomas Carter from Montana to introduce a bill to make Glacier a national park. Although initially failing several times, a bill establishing the new park was signed by President William Howard Taft in 1910.

Although it had created Glacier Park, Congress didn't provide money for buildings to accommodate visitors who began arriving as soon as the railroad was completed.

Not surprisingly, Louis Hill, who took over his father's railroad empire in 1907, was a big supporter of Glacier. He knew that Glacier's picturesque scenery would help fill Great Northern Railway cars.

To boost things along, the railway cranked up a publicity campaign to create a poetic image of the park that played on its rugged beauty.

"In the early years of the park, there was little that Louis Hill's Great Northern Railway didn't build, finance, control or influence," Guthrie wrote.

Considering Glacier to be America's Swiss Alps, he began building Swiss-style chalets for tourists.

The railroad also built many of the first trails and roads in the park. Hill brought in open-top motorized buses to replace stagecoaches for tourist travel. The black buses later were replaced in the 1930s by distinctive red touring buses.

The railroad would sell its properties in 1960 after business flagged when more tourists began camping out or staying in cabins.

The railroad may have played a big role in the park's early history, but it was the federal government that built the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

In the 1920s with the automobile craze well under way, Congress authorized money to build more roads in national parks.

Much of the west side of the Going-to-the Sun Road, which officially opened in 1933, was blasted into the sheer face of the Garden Wall, giving visitors stunning views of the valley below.

The highway is undergoing renovation that is expected to last for several years more. Efforts are being made to keep disruption of visitor travel during the summer to a minimum.

The Alpine section that includes the highest stretches of the road on both sides of Logan Pass is being rebuilt, a project that may be finished in 2014, said Amy Vanderbilt, Glacier Park spokeswoman.

Until the 1970s, the park was operated for visitors and scenic preservation, Guthrie said.

Hotels, roads, campgrounds and even wildlife management catered to visitors. Large predators such as the wolf and mountain lion were killed off, allowing tourist-pleasing mammals, such as bears and bighorn sheep, to thrive.

That started to change when visitors wanted a pristine wilderness experience and the park adopted a more conservationist and preservation management policy. Laws such as the 1964 Wilderness Act, the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act and the 1973 Endangered Species Act also played roles in changing policies.

Snowmobiles were banned. A boardwalk was built over a popular trail at Logan Pass to keep visitors off fragile landscape. Instead of building new campgrounds in the park, private campgrounds outside the park were encouraged. Mountain lions and wolves returned.

More recently, Glacier has emphasized science and research and worked to protect Glacier from outside threats including development of surrounding areas and water and air pollution.

Looking ahead to the next century, Glacier will address several issues, including designating most of the park as wilderness, said Supt. Chas Cartwright.

That was started more than three decades ago when wilderness for the park was proposed by President Richard Nixon.

Climate change is another challenge.

"Glacier National Park managers must become aware of the effects of climate change and be leaders in implementing 'green' policies and practices to address the risks and potential changes it entails," he said.

Contact Mary Pickett at mpickett@billingsgazette.com or 657-1262.