Glacier National Park
By Tom Mulvaney
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About this ebook
Pres. William Howard Taft signed the bill creating Glacier National Park in 1910, and a wilderness paradise in northwestern Montana was born. This book illustrates the park's evolution, from the Great Northern Railroad days, Native American presence, lodges, chalets, and camps, to majestic scenery and wildlife--all in vintage postcards. The opening of Glacier National Park coincided with the popularity of postcards across the nation, and hence this visual documentation of Glacier's many wonders is thorough and encompassing. With the celebration of its centennial in 2010, Glacier National Park continues to provide us with one of the last best places to visit.
Tom Mulvaney
Montana native Tom Mulvaney has collected Glacier National Park postcards for decades, and his collection now numbers over 4,000. Many wonderful Glacier National Park images are published for the first time in this volume, providing a unique visual perspective of this park for all readers. Mulvaney has written two other Postcard History Series books--Helena and Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley.
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Glacier National Park - Tom Mulvaney
author.
INTRODUCTION
Glacier National Park is definitely a visual place. Can you imagine a book or magazine article covering Glacier Park that does not include a number of images? And where can one locate these images, particularly vintage images covering aspects of Glacier’s 100-year-old history? Such images can be found in photographs, stereoviews, glass slides, brochures, old magazines and books, maps, calendars, and, of course, on postcards. Postcards are by far the most plentiful, in terms of variety, price, and availability.
The main focus of this book is on postcard images from the earlier days of the park, with most images dating from the 1910 to 1940 era. Chapter One presents some postcard images of the park area from the 1905 to 1910 period, before Glacier was officially a national park. A sampling of later images, dating to the present, are included in the book as well, sprinkled throughout most of the book’s other chapters.
An added feature that postcards provide, and that most other image mediums do not, is the documentation sometimes found on the back of the card. Most postcards have a caption on the front (image side of the card) that describes the image shown. Postcards sometimes have additional information printed on the back of the card. If the card has been sent in the mail, the postmark stamped on the back of the card helps to date the card and sometimes notes the location. Sometimes there will be a pertinent message on the back. Several of the images in this book had interesting messages that are described in the related caption.
Most of the images in this book were taken from real-photo postcards, which are actual photographs developed on postcard stock paper. The images on some Glacier Park real-photo postcards were produced in a printed postcard format as well. Collectors generally prefer the real-photo postcard version of an image, as it tends to show more detail, can generally be enlarged without distortion, and also because they were made in smaller quantities than their printed counterparts and tend to have a higher collector value.
Another point of interest is the identification of the photographer who took the original picture. Sometimes the photographer’s name is printed on the card, and sometimes it is not. To a collector, postcards that include the photographer’s name have an added degree of collectability.
For the purposes of this book, if the photographer is indicated on a postcard, credit is given at the end of the caption for that image. In a few cases, the photographer is not specifically identified on the card, but research and expert opinion may have resulted in identifying the photographer with a high degree of likelihood. In this case, the phrase attributed to
is used in the caption regarding photographer information.
PHOTOGRAPHERS IN GLACIER PARK. Many early postcard images of Glacier National Park were in real-photo format, and their original black-and-white or sepia tones convert nicely to the pages of this book. As noted above, real-photo images were generated from a photograph made into a postcard. Most of these images were taken by professional photographers, but a few were done by amateurs. The most prolific of the early-day photographers of Glacier Park–related images include Fred Kiser of Portland, Oregon; R. E. Ted
Marble, who had studios in Belton (now West Glacier) and Whitefish; and Tomer J. Hileman of Kalispell. Also noteworthy is Roland Reed, whose images of the Blackfeet Indians are unparalleled. Reed set up a Kalispell studio during his time in northwestern Montana. And finally, credit must be given to J. R. White, who can be considered the pioneer postcard photographer of Glacier Park. White, who had a Kalispell studio, took photographs and published a number of printed postcard views of the park region before it was officially established as Glacier Park in 1910. Many other photographers, professional and amateur alike, published at least a few Glacier Park postcards over the years. Among later photographers, the late Don J. Schmidt of Glacier Studio in Browning produced many fine postcards of the park and surrounding area.
GLACIER PARK NAMING CONVENTIONS. Over the years, some towns, hotels, and landmarks have been renamed. As a matter of convention, this book tries to reference locations by their name at the time the image was published, so as to correlate with information found on the card’s caption text or the message or postmark on the back of the card.
Both of the park’s most important entry towns have experienced name changes. East Glacier Park, the home of the Glacier Park depot and Glacier Park Lodge, was known as Midvale until 1913. Then the post office name was changed to Glacier Park. In 1950, the town’s current name of East Glacier Park went into effect. The town is sometimes referred to as just East Glacier. West Glacier, the home of the Belton Chalets, was known as Belton until 1949.
The Glacier Park Lodge was initially known as the Glacier Park Hotel. Lake McDonald Lodge was known initially as the Glacier Hotel, Lewis Hotel, or the Lewis Glacier Hotel during the early days after its completion in 1914. Later it took on the name Lake McDonald Hotel before becoming Lake McDonald Lodge. The first hotel in the park, on the site of the present-day Lake McDonald Lodge, was the Snyder Hotel, named after its builder, George Snyder. When Snyder sold the hotel to John and Olive Lewis, the hotel was renamed Glacier Hotel.
Lake McDermott was a popular lake in the park, and the waterfront for the Many Glacier Hotel. It was later renamed and is known today as Swiftcurrent Lake. St. Mary Lake is often referenced as St. Mary’s Lake or as Lake St. Mary on early postcard captions.
The Going-to-the-Sun Road was long known as the Going-to-the-Sun Highway, and early on, it was sometimes referred to as the Trans Mount Highway.
A SOBERING THOUGHT. No matter what one’s views are on the themes of global warming and man’s involvement in this phenomenon, there is no question that the glaciers in Glacier National Park are disappearing. Studies of maps and photographs over the past century provide clear evidence that more than 150 glaciers known to have existed in the park have either greatly retreated or, in many cases, disappeared altogether. Within the past 25 years, the U.S. Geological Survey began a more systematic study of the