50 Fun Facts About Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is in which US state?

Montana. Despite the name, Glacier holds only about two dozen glaciers, far fewer than North Cascades National Park in Washington, which has more than 300.

Which Canadian park joins Glacier to form the world's first International Peace Park?

Waterton Lakes National Park lies just across the Canadian border. Rotary clubs on both sides campaigned to link the two parks, and in 1932 both countries' legislatures approved the union as a symbol of peace.

Theodore Roosevelt had left office when which later president signed the bill creating Glacier National Park?

William Howard Taft signed the bill on May 11, 1910, which makes Glacier six years older than the National Park Service, the agency created in 1916 that now runs it.

Which conservationist, whose name is on one of Glacier's best-known glaciers, called the region the 'Crown of the Continent' in 1901?

George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream, first came on an 1885 hunting trip, kept returning for years, and used his magazine to swing public opinion behind a national park.

Which animal, often seen on the cliffs beside the Going-to-the-Sun Road, is the symbol of Glacier National Park?

Mountain goat. Kids follow their mothers up near-vertical ledges within days of birth, and hooves with grippy inner pads let the goats hold slopes too steep for most predators.

By Glacier National Park's usual rule, what must a mass of ice do to count as a glacier?

Flow under its own weight. Ice generally has to cover about 25 acres before it is heavy enough to move, so smaller patches are no longer counted among the park's glaciers.

Which predator, wiped out of Glacier National Park by 1936, returned on its own from Canada in the 1980s?

Gray wolf. Early rangers shot, trapped and poisoned the park's last packs; about fifty years later a pack from Canada denned in the North Fork valley and raised five pups.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide at which pass, the highest point on the route?

Logan Pass, at 6,646 feet, is named for William Logan, the park's first superintendent. Its car park often fills early on summer days, so the park urges visitors to take the shuttle.

The Garden Wall, a saw-toothed ridge above Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road, is a classic example of which glacial landform?

An arête. Two glaciers ground away at either side of the ridge until only a narrow wall of rock was left standing between their valleys.

What name is given to the snowfield, often over 60 feet deep, that buries part of the Going-to-the-Sun Road each winter?

The Big Drift. Ploughing snow this deep is slow work, which is why the road over the Continental Divide usually doesn't open from end to end until late June or July.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road climbs to its summit with just one hairpin switchback; what is that bend called?

The Loop. Builders chose one long climb along the cliffs over a stack of switchbacks, and the road is still so narrow and winding that vehicles over 21 feet long are banned from its alpine section.

Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road and Wild Goose Island appear in the opening credits of which 1980 horror film?

The Shining opens with aerial shots of Jack Torrance's car winding along Saint Mary Lake; leftover helicopter footage from the shoot was later used for the ending of Blade Runner's original cut.

Which Native nation sold the mountains east of the Continental Divide, now the eastern half of Glacier National Park, in 1895?

The Blackfeet sold under pressure from miners hunting for copper and gold. The prospectors found too little to mine, and within a few years the boom was over.

What did the Native people of the plains east of Glacier call the Rocky Mountains?

The Backbone of the World. The range marked the western edge of their homeland, and bands wintered in the wooded valleys at its foot, sheltered from the winds that swept the open plains.

Which railroad built Glacier's Swiss-style hotels to sell the park as 'America's Switzerland'?

Great Northern. Its trains delivered tourists to the park's edge, and its hotels and chalets were spaced about a day's horseback ride apart so guests could tour the backcountry in the saddle.

Which hotel on Swiftcurrent Lake was built as the showpiece of the railway's Swiss-style lodges in Glacier?

Many Glacier Hotel went up in a single year: crews worked through the winter to open it on July 4, 1915, using timber logged nearby and milled on the lakeshore.

Which stone-built chalet in Glacier's backcountry was gutted by the 2017 Sprague Fire and reopened in 2020?

Sperry Chalet lost its roof and timber interior, but the 1913 stone walls stayed standing, so crews braced them and rebuilt the dormitory inside the original shell over two summers.

What are Glacier National Park's famous red tour buses called?

Red Jammers. The nickname first belonged to the drivers, who could be heard jamming the gears on the steep climbs; when cracked frames retired the 1930s fleet in 1999, Ford paid millions to rebuild it.

Which lake is the largest in Glacier National Park?

Lake McDonald, 10 miles long and more than 460 feet deep, fills a valley that Ice Age glaciers gouged out and then dammed with the rubble they left behind.

Why are some of Glacier's lakes, such as Cracker Lake, an opaque turquoise?

Suspended glacial silt, also called rock flour. Glaciers grind the bedrock beneath them into a powder so fine that it hangs in the meltwater, and it turns some of the park's streams milky white.

What is the tallest mountain in Glacier National Park?

Mount Cleveland reaches 10,466 feet, one of only six summits in the park above 10,000 feet. The land beneath it was bought in 1895 during Grover Cleveland's presidency, and the peak carries his name.

Rain falling on Glacier's Triple Divide Peak can flow to the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico or which other body of water?

Hudson Bay. Water from the peak's north side joins the Saskatchewan river system and crosses Canada to reach it, which is why the summit is called the hydrological apex of North America.

The Lewis Overthrust pushed Glacier's ancient rocks about how far eastward over much younger rock?

About 50 miles. The slab came to rest on rock more than a billion years younger than itself, the reverse of the usual order, in which the oldest layers lie at the bottom.

Glacier's rocks hold fossils more than a billion years old of which early life form?

Stromatolites are layered mounds built up by mats of blue-green algae. By releasing oxygen as they grew, such algae helped create the air we breathe today.

Which lone peak on Glacier's eastern edge, left standing by erosion, is the best-known remnant of the Lewis Overthrust?

Chief Mountain is a block of ancient rock resting on much younger shale. Erosion stripped away the slab around it, leaving a tower that Native peoples have long held sacred.

Which two native mammals seen when Europeans arrived had vanished from the park by 2020?

Almost every other historic species survives, giving biologists an intact ecosystem; grizzlies and lynx are threatened but at historical numbers here.

Which fish native to Glacier is federally listed as threatened and must be released at once if caught?

Bull trout. No licence is needed to fish in the park, but lake trout introduced a century ago have spread through its big western lakes and now crowd out the native bull trout.

Which non-native fungus has killed a large share of Glacier National Park's whitebark pines?

Blister rust reached North America by accident in the early 1900s. The pine's fatty seeds feed Clark's nutcrackers, red squirrels and bears, so every dead tree is a loss for the animals of the high country.

Which colourful sea duck flies inland each spring to nest along Glacier's fast mountain streams?

Harlequin duck. It winters in pounding surf on rocky coasts, then pairs fly inland to nest beside white water, following every bend of the river rather than cutting across country.

What world weather record was set in January 1916 at Browning, just east of Glacier National Park?

The biggest 24-hour temperature drop: 100 °F, down to −56 °F. The plains here lie where warm chinook winds meet Arctic air spilling south from Canada, so temperatures can swing wildly within hours.

1964 is the only year on record in which Glacier National Park went without which natural event?

Wildfire. Fires have burned in the park in every other year on record, 64 of them in 1936 alone; 1964 instead brought catastrophic floods, when heavy June rain fell on the mountain snowpack.

Many of Glacier's high lakes sit in rock basins scooped out by glaciers; what are such lakes called?

Tarns. A waterfall below the outlet can cut them off from fish swimming upstream, so some of them held no fish at all until people stocked them for anglers.

Which village at the foot of Glacier's largest lake is named for a homesteader who rented cabins to early tourists?

Apgar. Milo Apgar came to farm the lakeshore in the 1890s, found it impractical, and was soon selling visitors cabins, meals, pack horses and boat trips instead.

Which Amtrak train stops at stations on the edge of Glacier National Park?

Empire Builder. The train carries the nickname of James J. Hill, whose railway crossed the mountains at the park's southern edge in 1891 and whose son Louis built its grand hotels.

Which wild berry, the star of Glacier's shrubs, is a favourite food of both bears and hikers?

Huckleberry. Attempts to farm the berries have largely failed, so the fruit in the region's pies and jams is still picked wild, in competition with the bears.

Which town is home to Glacier National Park's headquarters?

West Glacier. As Belton, it was where trains set visitors down for the new park, and the first superintendent made the railway's lodge there his winter headquarters; the town took the park's name in 1949.

Which conifer turns gold each autumn in Glacier and then, unlike its evergreen neighbours, drops all its needles?

Western larch. Its thick bark shrugs off fires that kill thinner-skinned neighbours, clearing the sunny space it needs.

Which US highway crosses the Continental Divide at Marias Pass, along Glacier's southern boundary?

US Route 2 follows the railway over Marias Pass and stays open all year, so in winter, when snow shuts the Going-to-the-Sun Road, it is the only way to drive between the park's east and west sides.

President Nixon asked Congress in 1974 to give more than 90 percent of Glacier National Park which legal protection, still never granted?

Wilderness designation. The bill never passed, but Park Service policy is to manage the recommended land as if Congress had said yes, so roads and new buildings stay out of nearly all of the park.

Which title did Glacier and its Canadian sister park earn in 2017, the first ever awarded to parks in two countries?

International Dark Sky Park. Keeping the title commits both parks to cutting light pollution, which matters to more than stargazers: many animals rely on darkness to hunt, hide and find their way.

Which two confederated tribes from west of Glacier present their history in the park's Native America Speaks programme, begun in 1982?

Salish and Kootenai. Their ancestors lived in the valleys west of the mountains and crossed the passes to hunt buffalo on the plains; today their speakers share the summer programme with neighbours from the east side.

The valleys on Glacier's wetter side shelter the easternmost groves of which giant tree of the Pacific Northwest's rainforests?

Western redcedar. Moist Pacific air reaches just far enough inland to suit it, and some of the cedars growing along the park's Avalanche Creek are more than 500 years old.

Before Glacier became a national park in 1910, what protected status did the land hold?

A forest preserve. That status still let in miners and homesteaders, which is why campaigners kept pushing for a national park, where both would be shut out.

Which New Deal agency built trails and campgrounds in Glacier National Park between 1933 and 1942?

Civilian Conservation Corps. Its young recruits, living in camps run by Army officers, also fought forest fires and cleared thousands of acres of timber killed in earlier blazes.

What is Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road named after?

A mountain along its route. Going-to-the-Sun Mountain's own name has two origin stories: a Native legend of a spirit who went back to the sun, and an account that the writer James Willard Schultz coined it in the 1880s.

Ripple marks and mud cracks preserved in Glacier's billion-year-old rocks show that they formed in what setting?

A shallow inland sea. Geologists call it the Belt Sea, and its mud and sand hardened into the Belt Supergroup, layers so little altered that raindrop prints can still be seen on them.

Glacier National Park's northern edge is the Canadian border; which two provinces lie on the other side?

Alberta and British Columbia. The boundary between the two provinces follows the crest of the Rockies and meets the United States at the park, so the same ridge that divides Glacier divides its Canadian neighbours.

Which president broadcast a radio address to the nation from Glacier's Two Medicine Chalet during his first visit to the park?

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke from the chalet in August 1934, telling listeners "There is nothing so American as our national parks" and wishing every American could have seen Glacier with him that day.

Which Glacier waterfall plunges from a hanging valley beside Mount Oberlin, across from the Going-to-the-Sun Road?

Bird Woman Falls. A small side glacier could not cut down as fast as the huge one in the main valley, so its bed was left hanging high on the mountainside; in dry years the falls run out of meltwater by autumn.

Which bird of Glacier's alpine tundra swaps its speckled summer feathers for snowy camouflage in winter?

White-tailed ptarmigan. Its camouflage works so well in every season that the bird often just crouches motionless and lets hikers walk right past without noticing it.