50 Fun Facts About Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is in which US state?

It sits in the northwest corner of the state on the Canadian border, covering more than a million acres.

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

Rotary clubs on both sides of the border pushed the idea in 1931; the US Senate approved it in March 1932 and Canada followed that May.

Which president signed the bill creating Glacier National Park on 11 May 1910?

The Boone and Crockett Club, a conservationist and a railway president had spearheaded the bill.

Who coined 'Crown of the Continent' in 1901 and spent two decades campaigning for the park?

He first came in 1885 on a hunting trip guided by author James Willard Schultz; a mountain and a glacier now carry his name.

How many active glaciers remained in the park by 2010, down from about 150 in the mid-1800s?

Only ice fields over 25 acres count as active; scientists estimate the rest may vanish within a couple of decades if current trends hold.

By what year do scientists estimate all the park's active glaciers could disappear?

An earlier estimate said 2020; a placard was updated to read 'when they will completely disappear, however, depends on how and when we act'.

Which ice field is famous for repeat photographs, taken between 1938 and 2015, that show its retreat?

Between 1850 and 1979, nearly three-quarters of the ice near the Blackfoot and Jackson ice fields melted away, and the two split apart.

What is the Going-to-the-Sun Road?

Finished in 1932, the 53-mile road bisects the park and was named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1985.

How high is Logan Pass, the road's crest on the Continental Divide?

The visitor center there logged a record 417,824 contacts in 2025; up to 80 feet of snow can bury the pass in spring.

What is the 'Big Drift'?

Ploughing the road takes about ten weeks even with machines that move 4,000 tons an hour; some days the crew clears only 500 feet.

Vehicles on the high part of the Sun Road may be no longer than what?

They must also be under 8 feet wide between Avalanche Creek and Rising Sun; the road is narrow with hairpin turns west of the pass.

The Sun Road and Wild Goose Island appear in the opening credits of which 1980 horror film?

Aerial shots follow Jack Torrance's car along Saint Mary Lake on the way to his hotel job interview.

Which Native nation sold some 800,000 acres in 1895 that became the eastern half of Glacier National Park?

Chief White Calf agreed to $1.5 million on the understanding that hunting rights would continue; the park's 1910 law made no such promise and the dispute has never fully ended.

What did the people of the eastern slopes call the park's mountains, such as Chief Mountain?

The peaks were used for vision quests and gave shelter from the winter winds of the plains.

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

President Louis Hill picked every site himself; the hotels never made a profit but filled his trains, and he sponsored artists to paint in the park.

The Many Glacier Hotel, the 'Gem of the West', stands on the shore of which body of water?

Built in a single year and opened on 4 July 1915, its four-storey lobby is ringed with Swiss-patterned balconies.

As of 2020, which of the railway's backcountry chalets were still in operation?

Sperry Chalet was gutted by the 2017 Sprague Fire, leaving only stone walls; it was rebuilt and reopened in 2020.

What are the park's famous red tour buses called?

The restored 1930s White Motor Company coaches earned the name from drivers jamming the gears; they were rebuilt in 2001.

What is the largest and deepest body of water in the park?

It is 10 miles long and 464 feet deep; the park has over 700 lakes but only 131 have names.

Why are lakes such as Avalanche and Cracker Lake an opaque turquoise?

The same rock flour turns some streams milky white; the cold lakes hold little plankton, so they stay very clear but pollutants linger.

What is the tallest mountain in the park?

It rises to 10,466 feet, one of six peaks over 10,000 feet in the park.

Water falling on Triple Divide Peak can flow to which three destinations?

It is the hydrological apex of North America, though only 8,020 feet high; if Hudson Bay counts as Arctic, it is the only point on Earth draining to three oceans.

The Lewis Overthrust pushed the park's ancient rocks how far eastward over younger strata?

The result is Proterozoic rock 1.4 to 1.5 billion years older than the Cretaceous rock it sits on; Chief Mountain is the most dramatic remnant.

The park's rocks hold about a billion-year-old fossils of which early life form?

Six species of the blue-green algae mounds are documented; a find called Horodyskia pushed the origin of complex-celled life back a full billion years.

Chief Mountain, an isolated remnant of the overthrust, rises how far above the Great Plains?

Henry L. Stimson, later Secretary of War, climbed its steep east face in 1892 with two companions, one of them a Blackfoot.

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 threatened fish must be released immediately if caught in the park?

No permit is needed to fish and limits are liberal otherwise; introduced lake trout have hammered native fish in some lakes.

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

The pine's fatty seeds feed red squirrels and Clark's nutcrackers, and bears raid the squirrels' caches.

Which colourful waterfowl is a signature species of the park's lakes and streams?

More than 260 bird species have been recorded, with bald and golden eagles, peregrines and ospreys resident all year.

What world weather record was set at Browning, just east of the park, on the night of 23–24 January 1916?

Thermometers fell from 44 °F to −56 °F between one afternoon and the next.

Which was the only year in the park's history with no forest fire?

1936 saw a record 64 fires; in 2003 six fires burned about 136,000 acres, more than 13 percent of the park.

How many named lakes does the park have, out of more than 700 in total?

The park also has about 200 waterfalls, one of the tallest being Bird Woman Falls, which drops 492 feet from a hanging valley.

Roughly how many miles of trail does the park maintain?

Over half of visitors take a hike; 110 miles of the Continental Divide Trail and 52 miles of the Pacific Northwest Trail cross the park.

Which Amtrak train stops at the park's stations at Essex and the east and west entrances?

The nearest airport is Kalispell; the railway crossed Marias Pass on the park's southern edge in 1891.

Some of the historic wooden tour boats on the park's lakes have run every season since which year?

They carry up to 80 passengers; three of the boats were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

Where is the park's headquarters?

The USGS also runs its climate-change research programme from there, studying the glaciers since 1992.

How many visitors did the park average in 2019?

That topped the 2017 peak of 3.31 million; the park has drawn at least 2 million a year since 2012.

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

It links the park's west and east entrance towns; the pass, at 5,213 feet, is where the railway crossed in 1891.

What share of the park did a 1974 study find eligible for wilderness designation?

Congress has still not acted, but Park Service policy means more than 90 percent is managed 'as if it were designated wilderness'.

What provisional designation did the joint Waterton-Glacier area receive in April 2017?

Both parks had already become biosphere reserves in 1976 and a World Heritage Site in 1995.

The Native America Speaks programme, begun in 1982, features which peoples?

It claims to be the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service.

How many buildings and structures in the park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places?

They include ranger stations, patrol cabins and fire lookouts, and the surviving railway hotels and chalets are National Historic Landmarks.

What was the region's protective status from 1897 until it became a park?

Mining was still allowed but never paid; the railway kept lobbying Congress for full park status.

Which New Deal agency built trails and campgrounds in the park between 1933 and 1942?

Its crews also fought fires and reforested; the auto camps at Swiftcurrent and Rising Sun date from the same era.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road is named after a mountain linked to a Native legend about which figure?

The deity came down from the Sun to teach hunting and left his image on the mountain; the road was first conceived by superintendent George Goodwin in 1917.

The park's rocks belong to which sedimentary group, laid down in shallow seas 1.6 billion to 800 million years ago?

They preserve ripple marks, mud cracks, salt casts and raindrop impressions, making them the best-preserved Proterozoic sediments in the world.

Waterton-Glacier was designated the world's first International Peace Park in which year?

Both parks later became UN Biosphere Reserves in 1976 and World Heritage Sites in 1995.

How long is the Going-to-the-Sun Road, completed in 1932?

A major reconstruction of the road was finished for the park's 100th anniversary in 2010.

Bird Woman Falls, one of the park's tallest, drops 492 feet from beneath which mountain?

The park scatters some 200 waterfalls, though many shrink to a trickle in drier months.

How many miles of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail run through Glacier National Park?

The Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail also crosses the park, on a 52-mile east-west route.