Glacier Park is way up at the northern edge of Montana. If it were a little farther north, it would be a Canadian citizen instead of being subject to Uncle Sam. It was the favorite hunting ground of the Blackfeet Indians but about 27 years ago copper was discovered there and Uncle Sam thought that the mines should be properly opened so he bought the land. There was not enough copper to make mining pay, but there was a stock of scenery so large that it would last forever, so Uncle Sam gave the land to his big family for another playground and the Blackfeet Indians now live on a reservation east of the park.
There is lots of big game among the mountains, and the Rocky Mountain sheep and mountain goats seem able to climb up the steep sides of the rocks as easily as a fly goes up a wall.
The park is named from its 60 glaciers, but is even more famous for its 250 lakes. People used to think that they had to go to Switzerland to see the most beautiful lakes in the world, but before long the Swiss will get the habit of "Seeing America First," for the lakes of Glacier Park are as fine as those in the Alps. There are tiny little ones high up among the mountains and large ones in the valleys and they are so deep and clear and still that they are like mirrors. The streams are wonderful, too. At the Triple Divide, the water separates and goes in three directions. One stream flows to the Pacific, another to Hudson Bay, and the third to the Gulf of Mexico.
Perhaps you think that tourists have to endure a lot of hardship to visit this wild spot, but if you could see some of these hotels (built like Swiss chalets), and could eat some of the meals they serve, you would change your mind. The fish from these mountain lakes have a flavor that beats anything we have ever tasted, and we have lived beside the Great Lakes all our lives. If we could stay here longer we should join a camping party, for they have great fun living in tents, fishing, hunting, tramping over the trails, and climbing glaciers. We will do our glacier climbing when we get to Ranier Park.
Uncle Sam has given the American people eleven national parks covering over seven thousand square miles of the finest scenery in the world, and Rainier Park in the State of Washington, is one of the most wonderful of these. Think of a park containing one mountain nearly three miles high, and having 28 rivers of ice or "glaciers" flowing down its sides. Thousands of years ago Mount Rainier was a hot-tempered old fellow and he and the smaller peaks in his range spent their time belching out fire, but at last in a frightful fit of passion, Mount Rainier blew off his entire head and where his brains were is now a huge crater filled with thousands of feet of ice. The other volcanoes put out their fires long ago, too, and now they all have snowy beards on their wrinkled old cheeks.
We climbed up one of the glaciers and it surely was "some climb." Everyone in the party used an alpine stock and it gave us fellows a kind of shaky feeling in our knees when we could look down a wall of ice a thousand feet deep into a great crevasse or crack. We were glad to stand pretty close to the guide who was big and strong and who knows these glaciers as we boys know the streets of Detroit. We never knew before that ice can flow like water only much more slowly. The center of a glacier moves down the mountain about 16 inches a day. There are tiny little insects living in this ice. We saw them through the microscope and they were hopping around as though their feet were cold. There are wee pink plants growing in the ice in some places and they make the ice look rose colored. They are so small that you cannot see them without a microscope.
Rainier Park is one of the famous wild flower gardens of the world. Blooming at the very edge of the snow fields are miles and miles of wonderful flowers. There are daisies, columbine, larkspur, and many others and they are much taller and finer than those in common gardens. Grown-ups tell us boys that if we associate with great people we shall grow to be like them, and perhaps these flowers grow so big and tall from living so near Mount Rainier and the great cedars and firs. We do not wonder that this part of the park is called "Paradise Valley."
