The Glacier Park Hotels, Chalets and Cabin Camps

THE GLACIER PARK HOTELS, CHALETS AND CABIN CAMPS

H. R. Wiecking, Public Relations Assistant Great Northern Railway Company

Establishment of Glacier National Park by Congress in 1910 meant that this beautiful area would welcome countless visitors in the years ahead.

Construction of hotels and chalets to accommodate the travelers began in 1911. Except for the hotel at Lake McDonald, which was privately built, those erected between the time of the park's opening and 1914 were built by the Great Northern Railway Company.

The Glacier Park Hotel Company, wholly owned by Great Northern Railway Company took over in 1914. The name changed in 1943 to the Glacier Park Company, which now owns and operates all hotels, chalets and cabin camps within the park, under supervision of the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior. This Company also owns and operates the Prince of Wales Hotel, across the border in Canada. All of these facilities are open from June 15 to September 15.

First development took place at Belton, the western rail gateway. In that region, as elsewhere, much of the land was privately owned.

A colorful man named Dow owned a small hotel and store near the Belton depot. He also operated a stagecoach service between Belton and Apgar, at the foot of Lake McDonald, from which point tourists and supplies went to the head of the lake by boat.

One Snyder had homesteaded the land on which Lake McDonald Hotel stands. Ownership passed to John Lewis of Columbia Falls, Montana, who maintained a fishing and tourist camp there many years. Mr. Lewis built the present Lake McDonald Hotel in 1913 and operated it as "Lewis' Glacier Hotel" until purchase by the Glacier Park Hotel Company in 1930.

Charley Russell, famed Montana cowboy artist, maintained a summer cabin and studio near Lake McDonald. He was a close friend of Lewis, and it is said he scratched the pictographs on the base and hearth of the massive lobby fireplace in Lake McDonald Hotel.

Development on the east side of the park, begun on a small scale in 1911, was pushed in 1912. Locations for various hotels and chalet groups were selected by L. W. Hill, then president of Great Northern Railway.

Mr. Hill, a leader in all matters relating to the park, was enthusiastic over its possibilities as an outstanding scenic recreational area on the railway's main line. He devoted much time to the planning, building and furnishing of hotels and chalets and construction of roads and trails opening the area to visitors. The Department of the Interior, which supervised the National Parks (this was before the creation of the National Park Service) could not be expected to supply the initiative, energy and capital needed for quick development of visitor comforts in this great and attractive wilderness. Mr. Hill did all that needed doing. His enthusiasm was contagious and there was hardly a department of his large railway organization that was not called upon to make its contribution to the work in hand.

What now is Glacier Park village was known as Midvale until 1912, when the present depot was built. A large construction crew brought in from outside was housed in temporary quarters. Tourists that year were accommodated in tent houses and fed in a community dining hall under canvas.

First completed building in the Glacier Park Hotel group was the chalet on the bank of Midvale Creek, just west of the present annex. That portion of the hotel now housing the lobby and dining room was built in the winter of 1912-1913 and opened to guests on June 15, 1913.

Opening of the hotel was a festive occasion taxing all facilities. Hundreds of Blackfeet Indians erected their tepees on the grounds. A special train brought excursionists from Kalispell and Whitefish. Groups came from Great Falls, Cut Bank, Conrad, Helena, and other Montana communities. Vacationists from more distant parts of the nation had been attracted in extensive numbers.

The hotel site had been bought from the Piegan Indians, a tribe of the Blackfeet nation. The Indians knew Mr. Hill as Gray Horse and loved him. He had known most of the tribesmen since the days when the railway founded and directed by his father--James J. Hill, the Empire Builder--was being projected through the reservation and into the Rockies by way of Marias Pass.

The demonstration staged by the Indians upon the hotel's opening was one always to be remembered by those fortunate enough to be present. It was largely a personal tribute to Mr. Hill. Famed old men of the tribe were there--Medicine Owl, Curly Bear, Big Moon, Heavy Breast, Two Guns, Stabbed-By-Mistake, Tail Feathers, Bad Marriage, Mountain Chief, Heavy Runner and others.

Few of these elderly Indians had ever been beyond the boundaries of the government reservation. They never ceased to wonder at the seemingly unlimited powers the Great Spirit had bestowed on white men as the massive lodge took shape. They were astounded by the size of timbers brought in on flat cars from Washington and Oregon, the large fir columns 40 to 46 inches in diameter and 40 feet high which now form a colonnade in the lobby, and the immense cedars from Washington which support the verandas. Naturally enough, the Glacier Park Hotel came to be called "The Big Tree Lodge" by the Blackfeet.

The Indian celebration was marred by one mishap. Old Chief Heavy Breast, dancing well into the morning after, suffered a heart attack and died. Those unfamiliar with the ways of Indians were impressed by the wails accompanying the mourning of the Indian women for several days after Heavy Breast departed this life.

Glacier Park Hotel was hardly open to guests before necessity for enlargement became recognized. During the winter of 1913-1914 the annex, the present kitchen, employees' quarters, power house and laundry were built, and the dining room was expanded.

Several small log cabins in the Two Medicine Lake chalet group were built in 1911. The large dormitory and dining halls followed in 1914. Timbers for these buildings were cut in the vicinity.

The now-razed Cut Bank chalet group was built in 1911 and opened in 1912. The St. Mary, Going-to-the-Sun and Many Glacier chalet groups, likewise no longer in existence, were built from 1911 through 1913.

Construction of Many Glacier Hotel, now the largest in the park, began early in 1914 and continued into 1915. Its opening took place on July 4, 1915. All the timber was cut around Swiftcurrent Lake, processed in a saw and planing mill erected nearby, and seasoned in temporary kilns before the hotel was built. Most of the furniture was made on the site from local lumber. Window sash, door frames, and much else used for building and equipping the hotel was freighted in.

During this period pioneer roads were under construction too, between Glacier Park and Many Glacier, and between Browning and Many Glacier. An automobile did well in those days to get from Glacier Park Hotel to St. Mary and back in one day.

The very wet year of 1915 was good for crops but bad for sight-seeing tourists. Old-timers recall that teams of eight horses were kept at bad points along the highway, particularly where the road crossed headwaters of the Milk River, to rescue buses from the mud.

One consequence of the mud was that heavy loads of construction material and supplies for Many Glacier Hotel had to be moved by team. Big wagons left Glacier Park station every morning on the five-day trek to the hotel site and return. Their six-mule teams were urged on by rough-and-tumble, old-time Montana mule-skinners. Heavy boiler room equipment for the hotel was unloaded from railway cars at Browning. One boiler and its wagon bogged down so completely in the mud that both were out of circulation five or six weeks.

The volume of "dudes" (visitors) grew rapidly from 1913 to 1917, and for a time it seemed that construction of hotels, chalets, roads, trails, telephone lines and the like might never end. In the World War I year of 1918, however, everything came to a standstill. The guest count fell off sharply, operating crews were reduced to a minimum and some interior facilities were closed entirely. In 1919 the war had ended and conditions veered toward normal.

As the years passed the park's popularity continued to grow and a shortage of hotel accommodations was apparent. A beautiful Swiss-type lodge on the Canadian end of Waterton Lake in Waterton Lakes Park came into the planning.

This is Prince of Wales Hotel, with the breath-taking view over Waterton Lake from its location at the foot of Mount Crandall. Construction started in 1926 and the hotel began operating in 1927. Materials were brought in from Cardston. Much of the furniture was built on the site from British Columbia cedar. Most of the equipment was made in Canada. The large two-story steel window frame in the lobby, permitting an unobstructed southerly view, was fabricated in England.

One of the interesting features of the Prince of Wales is the series of Indian pictograph friezes decorating the lobby. These canvases were made by the elders of the Blood tribe--a division of the Blackfeet nation living on Indian land in southern Alberta close to Waterton Lakes Park. They are authentic, historical sketches recounting memorable exploits in the lives of the old chieftains.

The Swiftcurrent Auto Cabin Camp opened in 1933. Cabins were added in 1934, a camp store in 1935, and more cabins in the spring of 1936. On August 31, 1936, fire that swept through the Swiftcurrent Valley destroyed 31 cabins. These were rebuilt in 1937. A central comfort station, including shower baths, was added in 1940. A coffee shop began functioning in 1941.

Rising Sun Auto Cabin Camp received its first guests in 1941. Facilities here, in addition to cabins, include a coffee shop and a general camp store.

All of the hotels, chalets and cabin camps operated by the Glacier Park Company, with the exception of the Rising Sun Cabin Camp, were closed during the war years of 1943, 1944, and 1945.

Capacities of the hotels, chalets and cabin camps being operated by the Glacier Park Company follow:

Number of Rooms -- Guest Capacity

Many Glacier Hotel -- 238 -- 375

Glacier Park Hotel -- 175 -- 300

Prince of Wales Hotel -- 90 -- 140

Lake McDonald Hotel -- 76 -- 125

Two Medicine Chalets -- 33 -- 50

Sperry Chalets -- 21 -- 40

Granite Park Chalets -- 19 -- 35

Swiftcurrent Auto Cabin Camp -- 54 cabins -- 125

Rising Sun Auto Cabin Camp -- 19 cabins -- 35