That's My World - Glacier National Park

Time once again to share the beauty of our world, a meme hosted each week by Klaus and the My World Team, Sandy, Wren, Fishing Guy, Louise and myself. Over a hundred people are sharing their world and we're hoping many more will join us. Click on the icon, follow the directions, sign up and share the beauty!

A few weeks ago my son, Adam, returned to Great Falls, Montana, the town where he was born and grew up. I did a post on Great Falls a few weeks ago and it triggered lots of memories. Not the least of these was our almost yearly trip in our motor home to Glacier National Park, a truly breathtakingly beautiful place that never failed to inspire all of us. So, thanks to Google and Wikipedia I was able to find some history and gorgeous photos which I'm sharing with you today. Enjoy!

Glacier National Park is located in the U.S. state of Montana, bordering the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia to the North and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to the East. Glacier National Park contains two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), which are sometimes referred to as the southern extension of the Canadian Rockies.





According to archeological evidence, Native Americans first arrived in the Glacier area some 10,000 years ago. The earliest occupants with lineage to current tribes were the Salish, Flathead, Shoshone and Cheyenne. The Blackfeet arrived around the beginning of the 18th century and soon dominated the eastern slopes of what later became the park, as well as the Great Plains immediately to the east. The park region provided the Blackfeet shelter from the harsh winter winds of the plains, and supplemented their traditional bison hunts with other game meat. Today, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation borders the park in the east, while the Flathead Indian Reservation is located west and south of the park. When the Blackfeet Reservation was first established in 1855 by the Lame Bull Treaty, it included the eastern area of the current park up to the Continental Divide. To the Blackfeet, the mountains of this area, especially Chief Mountain and the region in the southeast at Two Medicine, were considered the "Backbone of the World" and were frequented during vision quests. In 1895, Chief White Calf of the Blackfeet authorized the sale of the mountain area, some 800,000 acres (3,200 km2), to the U.S. government for $1.5 million with the understanding that they would maintain usage rights to the land for hunting, etc as long as the ceded stripe will be public land of the United States. This established the current boundary between the park and the reservation.

Lake McDonald.






While exploring the Marias River in 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition came within 50 miles (80 km) of the area that is now the park. A series of explorations after 1850 helped to shape the understanding of the area that later became the park. George Bird Grinnell came to the region in the late 1880s and was so inspired by the scenery that he spent the next two decades working to establish a national park. In 1901, Grinnell wrote a description of the region, in which he referred to it as the "Crown of the Continent", and his efforts to protect the land make him the premier contributor to this cause. A few years after Grinnell first visited, Henry L. Stimson and two companions, including a Blackfeet Indian, climbed the steep east face of Chief Mountain in 1892.

Lake Grinnell



Big Horn Sheep



The Going to the Sun Highway! Do click on this one to embiggen so you get a better view of this magnificent highway through Glacier National Park.