Creating a National Park

Glacier National Park owes its existence, in part, to the Great Northern Railway.

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Creating a National Park Details

Glacier National Park owes its existence, in part, to the Great Northern Railway. In 1891, the railway crossed the Continental Divide at Marias Pass along the park's southern boundary at 5,213 feet. To generate business for the railroad, the company began advertising the scenic beauty of the region to the public, and then lobbied Congress to create a forest preserve, which occurred in 1897. Mining efforts in the area were still allowed, although they were largely unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the park's champions, like George Bird Grinnell and Henry L. Stimson, kept up their efforts and, in 1910, a bill was introduced into Congress to re-designate the region a national park. This bill was signed into law by President William Howard Taft on May 11, 1910. Once Glacier was designated a national park, the Great Northern Railway built a number of hotels and chalets in the 1910s to further promote tourism. Of these, only Sperry, Granite Park, and Belton Chalets are still in operation, while a building formerly belonging to Two Medicine Chalet is now the Two Medicine Store. The surviving chalet and hotel buildings within the park are designated as National Historic Landmarks. The establishment of Glacier National Park threw the rights of the native Blackfeet people into question. When the area was a forest reserve, the tribe retained its traditional usage rights, but the legislation that created the national park did not mention the guarantees to the Native Americans. The U.S. government has held that the former rights ceased to exist with the park's establishment, and this ruling was confirmed by the courts in 1935. In the 1980s, armed standoffs were avoided narrowly several times between the Blackfeet, who maintain that their usage rights still exist, and the federal government.

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