In the 1920s and 1930s, private automobiles replaced railroads as Americans’ primary means of long-distance travel. This meant that, among many other things, Glacier National Park was transformed from a private playground for the relative few who could afford train fare into a true “public pleasure ground.” Thousands of miles of highways had to be built to bring tourists to Montana, but the most spectacular feat of roadbuilding was the construction of Going-to-the-Sun Road, dedicated in 1933. The road crosses the “backbone of the world,” as the region’s original inhabitants, the Blackfeet, called the Continental Divide. The 52-mile-long road—48.7 miles of which have been recognized as a National Historic Landmark road— offers tourists some of the most stunning vistas found anywhere. Designed by highway engineer Frank Kittredge, the route includes a grand loop carved directly into a cliff known as the Garden Wall. It took eight years and $2.5 million to achieve this engineering marvel. Three men died during construction and many more resigned in the face of difficult and vertigo-inducing work. Hauling in supplies and equipment provided its own logistical challenge, often requiring the construction of new trails. Laborers moved mind-boggling quantities of trees, stumps, and rocks while skilled masons used native stone to build bridges, retaining walls, and guardrails that blended into the surrounding environment. The road they built—and that we still enjoy—truly fulfils its purpose: “making available to people the most and best of Nature's creation.”
]]>Wooden boats first ferried visitors to these mountains across Lake McDonald in the 1890s. Creation of Glacier National Park in 1910 and the Great Northern Railway’s tourism infrastructure brought many more visitors and the need for transport and sight-seeing boats. Flathead Lake boat-builder J. W. Swanson began building and operating boats in the park starting with Ethel on Lake McDonald in 1911. Swanson subsequently built nine boats for use on the park’s glacial lakes. His exceptional skills intertwine with the park’s maritime history. In 1920, Swanson opened his own boat concession on Two Medicine Lake and at Many Glacier, building wooden passenger boats for these lakes. In 1926, he built twin 45-foot, 50-passenger vessels, the Rising Wolf for Two Medicine Lake and Little Chief for the Glacier Park Hotel Company on St. Mary Lake. Both the Rising Wolf and Little Chief carry heavy fir keels with oak frames, and cedar planking shaped to the curve of the hulls. (Little Chief, renamed Sinopah, now operates on Two Medicine Lake.) Swanson sold his boat concession and boats to Arthur J. Burch and Carl Anderson in 1938. Rising Wolf, named for the massive mountain that flanks the north shore of Two Medicine Lake, carried tourists until 1975; its use was then limited. The vessel received a meticulous 3,000-hour restoration by the Burch family in 1991. The fully restored Rising Wolf, rechristened Little Chief for its new home on St. Mary Lake, continues to enchant visitors with the same feeling and views as it did during its first excursions in 1926.
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