“The Ramparts of God” Part of the joy in being retired is freedom of time and as the temperature began to approach the 100’s in Billings I decided to leave town and spend three weeks exploring the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Montana. The plan is to head northwest from Billings to Glacier National Park, cross over into the Flathead Valley, explore the forests of the northwest corner of Montana, then turn east and tour central Montana before returning south to Billings. Augie the doggie and I packed up and hit the road. Come along!
St. Mary, MT to Columbia Falls, MT (Hwy 87 to Browning, then Hwy 2 west to Columbia Falls, MT)
Leaving St. Mary on a sunny morning, we head south along Hwy 87. The highway skirts the eastern foothills of Glacier with the mountains on our right and the wooded foothills and glimpses of the plains on our left.
My next destination is the third of the eastern valleys, Two Medicine. In the early days of the park this was the most visited destination as it is closest to the train depot in East Glacier and is also the smallest, allowing guests to stay in the luxury of the landmark Glacier Park Lodge and visit the Two Medicine Valley as a day trip, if they so preferred. After the lengthy trip across the prairie, the last hundred miles with the tantalizing lure of the wall of mountains inching ever closer, guests departed at the East Glacier train depot. This small building is still in use today as the northernmost Amtrak passenger train, “The Empire Builder” runs across the top of the United States and includes a stop at East Glacier.
After stepping down from the train guests walked on a grand promenade (now a lush garden guiding the eye up to the view) across a small swale and up a rise to the Glacier Park Lodge.
The Glacier Park Lodge was the first of Louis Hill’s grand hotels luring visitors to Glacier National Park. Ads were taken out in all the major publications of the day, luring the adventurous west. To the right is a copy of an ad placed in a 1912 edition of the National Geographic Magazine. The Glacier Park Lodge is built in the style of a cluster of three Swiss chalets. The two main buildings are seen in the picture above (the first on the right completed in 1913, the second, completed a year later, mostly hidden behind the trees to the left) are connected with a glass gallery, while the third is a smaller, more exclusive chalet in the back.
A special act of Congress had given Hill the right to purchase land from the Blackfeet Indian reservation for his hotel and he chose a design similar to one he had seen in the Forestry Building at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition held in Portland, Oregon, in 1905. The atrium lobby is a duplicate of the grand hall of the Forestry Building, details complete down to the 60 forty feet Douglas Fir tree trunks with bark forming the colonnade around the walls. (An interesting sidelight – we saw a similar design at the Many Glacier Hotel except the giant columns had been shorn of their bark. Turns out that the reason for this is that the logs for Many Glacier were dragged by horseback from the railroad depot in Browning and so much of the bark was lost in transit. The logs for the Glacier Park Lodge came directly off the train at the depot by the lodge and so arrived with the bark intact.)
The view off the deck to the back overlooks the first golf course in Montana (opened in 1928) and the mountains beyond which form the southern wall of the Two Medicine Valley.
First is a picture of the western side of the lodge, next is the third building, the smaller chalet.
During the early years travelling by horseback or foot were the only transportation options but the motorized age soon came to Glacier. In the late 1930’s the iconic “Red Jammer” open-aired buses arrived in the park. The nickname “jammer” came from the sound of the grinding of changing gears as drivers negotiated the steep ups and downs of driving the park roads. Restored jammers are still in service today. An updated version, the Checker Aerobus, came in to use in the 1960’s.
After relaxing guests embarked on their exploration of the Two Medicine Valley by travelling through a heavily forested valley along the north shore of Lower Two Medicine Lake before the short climb up to Two Medicine Lake. From the 1890’s until the completion of the Going to the Sun Highway in 1932 this was the most visited area of the park. Lower Two Medicine Lake is a natural lake but a small dam was built at the eastern end in 1967 to allow for flood control.
The road into the valley is only nine miles long and skirts the north shore of Lower Two Medicine Lake for most of the way. Every now and then the lake glistens through the forest.
The short distance between Lower Two Medicine Lake and Two Medicine Lake climbs through dense forests with towering peaks on both sides.
We emerge from the forest onto the shore of Two Medicine Lake. There is no lodging here, simply a small store built in 1913 that originally held provisions for visitors.
This is a jumping off point for exploring the surrounding glacial valleys. A small boat dock offers boat tours of the lake (I passed…) Standing on the shores of Two Medicine Lake, I decide to do another of my rotating photo stories. Here’s the view starting from the south side of the lake sweeping the view west and then turning to the north.
Note how clear the water is, the rocks on the bottom of the lake shine in the morning sun.
This is a stunning finale to my visit to the eastern side of Glacier National Park. Back to the Glacier Park Lodge, I take my leave as so many visitors before, looking down from the front porch of the Glacier Park Lodge towards the train depot.
Back on Hwy 2 the road for us now turns west to cross the Marias Pass and exit the mountains at West Glacier to Columbia Falls. The Marias Pass was chosen for the train crossing because it is a relatively east pass, if not the easiest pass, through the northern Rocky Mountains. Quickly the road threads through the forested mountains (these are not the towering peaks of the park) and follows the Middle Fork of the Flathead River out of mountains at West Glacier.
Next up: Northwestern Montana
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