Were it not for the Great Northern Railway, travel through Glacier Park would be practically impossible. Probably the Great Northern was not entirely altruistic, and yet I believe that Mr. Louis Warren Hill, known always as "Louie" Hill, has had an ideal and followed it—followed it with an enthusiasm that is contagious. And with an inspiring faith.
The Great Northern has built huge hotels in three places and at a dozen other locations has built groups of log houses, Swiss fashion, so that it is possible to follow the trails by day and to be comfortably housed and fed each night.
These hotels, built by the Great Northern, are now owned and controlled by the Glacier Park Hotel Company.
At the entrance to the park is the Glacier Park Hotel that cost half a million dollars and is almost as large as the National Capitol at Washington. Like all the hotels and chalets in the park, it is constructed largely of the huge trunks of the trees of the Northwest. The Indians call the Glacier Park Hotel the "Great Log Lodge." There is everything from a store to a swimming-pool.
Fifty miles away in the very heart of the park there is the new Many Glaciers Hotel. It also cost a half-million dollars. There is an automobile road leading to Many Glaciers.
The chalet system, also built by the Great Northern, has done more than anything else to make the park possible for tourists. Automobile roads and trails alike touch the chalets, and, although I am firm in my conviction that it is impossible to see the park properly from an automobile, I realize that there are many who will not take the more arduous and sportsmanly method. For them, then, a short trip of twelve or fifteen miles each day takes them from chalet to chalet. There are chalets at Two-Medicine Lake, at Cutbank Canyon, at Going-to-the-Sun, at St. Mary's Lake, at Gunsight Pass, at the Sperry Glacier, at Granite Park, and at Belton.
There are inclusive and very moderate rates for various tours to take up a certain number of days. A saddle-horse costs two dollars a day; a pack-horse two dollars a day; a guide, who will furnish his own horse and board himself, five dollars a day.