Minnesota’s First National Park

Long before Minnesota had a national park, it had Glacier National Park. Thousands of us once worked the Great Northern rail cars that brought travelers there, as well as the magnificent, now-decades-old edifices built to house the guests each summer. On an August visit last year, it seemed like every fourth license plate boasted an origin in the land of 10,000 lakes.

In many ways, Glacier Park has changed little in the last hundred years. But its glaciers are melting, and there is a real question if they can survive another generation of climate change. Equally threatened are its architecturally important historic lodges and chalets, which rival the extraordinary railroad lodges of the Canadian Rockies for grandeur and setting, and stand alone in the national park system in sheer quantity.

James J. Hill’s Great Northern brought America to Glacier, Hill lobbied for its designation as a national park, and—in an audacious gambit inconceivable today—GN was allowed to construct two hotels and eight-plus chalets scattered across and around the park, from hard by the tracks to the remotest backcountry.

But, unlike Canada’s lodges that gleam and are almost better than when they were built, the lodges in northwest Montana have rarely had fortune on their side. They were built to exploit commerce, not nature. Hill believed a string of lodges and remote chalets would draw wealthy Easterners and Midwesterners and their staffs to Montana via his railroad instead of to Switzerland or Austria, where they traditionally had summered. GN coined the slogan “See America First,” and it paid off.

The lodges and chalets were designed by Hill’s son, Louis (who also supervised the operation) to accommodate travelers who would arrive by train, spend two or three days at one site, and move to the next by horse, mule, launch, or bus, often dressed in coat and tie, staff trailing. But this early heyday did not last even two decades. The stock market crash of 1929 depleted the ranks of America’s wealthy, and left Glacier and GN suffering. As the Great Depression ebbed, World War II, with its attendant travel privations and gasoline rationing, began. By the time atomic bombs exploded over Japan in August 1945, Glacier’s lodges had spent almost half their life struggling. They were in decline almost from the moment of birth.

Louis Hill died in 1948, and by 1951 only 2 percent of Glacier’s visitors came by his dad’s railroad. The lodges’ economics were equally dismal—they existed in a harsh climate, which took a heavy toll, and they generated revenue for, at best, an eighty-day season each summer. With the postwar advent of mass auto travel, the park’s tourism model became an anachronism.

Desperate, GN spent $3 million (from 1957 to 1959) renovating the aging buildings. The log hotels were modernized to appeal to postwar tourists. Some were stripped of period elements and Native American artifacts and equipped with Formica countertops, false ceilings, and indoor-outdoor carpeting over the wood floors. Most of the smaller backcountry lodges eventually closed.

After the 1960 season, GN sold the lodge concession to Don Hummel, the mayor of Tucson, Arizona, who had run park hotels in Alaska and California. More modernizations followed a massive 1964 flood. In 1981, Hummel sold his Glacier Park, Inc., to what later became a division of the Dial soap corporation. GPI continues to manage the park’s hotels on a twenty-five-year contract. As the historic lodges and chalets of Glacier National Park approach their tenth decade, they remain an intriguing, if tragic, touchstone in one of America’s most scenic and most overlooked national parks. A less-than-enlightened operator and a federal government that has devoted resources to historic lodges in more prominent national parks (Yellowstone, Yosemite) have left them in a state of almost suspended animation. To date, small pieces of GN’s park holdings have been revived, but all have suffered the ravages of time.

A visit to Glacier remains not only an unparalleled natural experience, but Glacier itself is a living museum of American rustic architectural history with enduring ties to the Twin Cities (many of Glacier’s and GN’s historical records are preserved in Minnesota). As the lodges and chalets approach their centenary, Glacier partisans should demand that Louis Hill’s creations—which house so many Minnesotans’ memories—finally rise to a position of prominence in America’s cultural preservation efforts. Until that day, here’s a selective guide to rediscovering these historic masterpieces.

BELTON CHALET
In one of time’s great ironies, the structure that was the least of Hill’s creations is now the most lovingly preserved. Belton Chalet, the first lodging at Glacier Park, opened in 1910 on a site directly across from the Belton, Montana, railroad station (and eventually U.S. Highway 2) at the park’s western gateway. Lacking a scenic location, the Belton began its decline early, exacerbated by the opening of Glacier Park Lodge on the railroad line at the park’s eastern gateway in 1913.

Operated only intermittently since 1926, and barely at all since WWII, the modest two-story lodge and its two guest cabins were bought in 1997 by Cas Still and Andy Baxter, a Montana couple who specialize in historic restoration. Because the Belton had never been modernized and barely used, many of the hotel’s original furnishings were found intact. They formed the heart of the restoration.

The couple carefully added en suite bathrooms, found appropriate reproduction lighting and soft goods, and in 1999 reopened the Belton, which now operates on an almost year-round basis. Due to its sensitive restoration, it’s the obvious template for the revival of GN’s remaining park lodges. The Belton’s restaurant and taproom is one of the best in the Glacier region. Summer rates from $130. West Glacier, Montana, 888-235-8665.

SPERRY CHALET
Sperry Chalet is the other Glacier lodging that evokes the era of its birth. Opened in 1914, after two years of construction (from on-site materials) by Italian stonemasons, this backcountry lodge at 6,560 feet was the trekkers’ gateway to the park’s magnificent eastern side near what was, in GN days, one of the park’s most-noted attractions, Sperry Glacier.

The chalet, accessible only on foot or horseback, and up a nearly seven-mile trail with an increase in elevation of 3,300 feet, has thrived due to its solid construction and relative inaccessibility. In 1954, GN sold it to the National Park Service, which appointed Ross and Kay Luding to operate it for its short seventy-day season. The Luding family remains on-site today—the GN logo still visible on one of the stone buildings.

From spotless wood-paneled bedrooms (with saggy mattresses) to hearty, simple meals served in the dining room, little has changed here. There is no electricity or heat, just propane lighting and a wood-burning stove in the dining building. (The Ludings say much of the lodge’s original kitchenware, bedding, and small furnishings disappeared during a multiyear closure in the 1990s.) Though the hike to the chalet is only moderately scenic, the views from the rooms are amazing, as are hikes into the high country. Book early and plan to stay at least two nights to fully appreciate the experience. Opens July 10; $255 per couple per night, all meals included (2004 rates). 888-345-2649GRANITE PARK CHALETS
Sperry’s stone sister, The Granite Park Chalets, sits in a more scenic location, at timberline along a spectacular and level 7.6-mile trail from Logan Pass along the Continental Divide. Restored in 1996 after a multiyear closure (to address waste-disposal/water-treatment issues), GPC reopened as a hikers’ shelter with limited services and a pack in/pack out policy.

Granite Park lacks the evocative feel of Sperry due to its minimalist operating philosophy, but guests interested in a more full-service experience can hire Glacier Wilderness Guides to provide a guided hike to the chalet and prepare meals. In 2005, the Ludings will operate both Granite Park and Sperry. From July 1; $66 per night (without bedding) per person; $76 with bedding (’04 rates). 888-345-2649

LAKE MCDONALD LODGE
The one historic park lodging not built by GN, Lake McDonald Lodge, was opened by hotelier John Lewis in 1914. Purchased by GN in 1930 and sold to the National Park Service in 1932, it is the smallest of the grand park lodges, but the best preserved. LML sits prettily alongside Lake McDonald at the park’s western end, where it’s the only grand lodge along the spectacular Going-To-The-Sun Road.

The lodge’s exterior and public areas were restored to their early 1900s feel in a 1988 renovation when operators commissioned reproductions of handrails, faucets, and other accessories and returned period paint hues to the walls. Historic lighting (from GN’s Prince of Wales Hotel in Canada), which previously had been moved to Lake McDonald, was restored at that time. Unfortunately, the guest rooms and cabins did not benefit from that renovation and retain a motel ambience. May 28–October 2; from $96 per night. 406-892-2525

GLACIER PARK LODGE AND MANY GLACIER HOTEL
Sadly, GN’s two showpieces, the flagship Glacier Park Lodge (1913) and the sprawling, spectacularly located Many Glacier Hotel (1915), bear the ravages of time the most poorly. I can’t recommend either for an overnight stay.

Glacier Park Lodge, technically outside the park’s boundaries and dominion, is owned outright by Glacier Park, Inc., and is surrounded by the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. It has been the victim of dreadful modernizations, tacky additions (swimming pool, aborted casino), and a general insensitivity to its historic nature. Its rooms are motel-like and vaguely depressing. Still, its sprawling atrium roof held up by massive trees, plus its historical diorama and wildflower-planted lawn, are worth a day trip.

The Swiss-style Many Glacier Hotel, at the setting-out point for the park’s most scenic array of hikes, is also owned by GPI, but sits on national park land. It is literally falling apart, but fortunately, may be the first of Louis Hill’s grand lodges to receive the complete makeover it so badly needs. The National Park Service has just completed a massive $6.5 million exterior renovation and structural restoration, and planning has begun for a complete $20 million interior renovation, including gutting the 1950s/’60s “improvements.” It will include a return of all major historic features and renovation of the motel-like guest rooms to a period ambience. This phase has not been funded, but the NPS hopes to have it complete by Glacier’s centenary in 2010 or the building’s in 2015. 406-892-2525 

Adam Platt is travel editor of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.