In the winter of 2017, Jim Dahlstrom reported to the Polebridge Ranger Station for his new assignment in Glacier National Park. For a career National Park Service ranger, it was the type of assignment someone like Dahlstrom had dreamed about: the closest a 21st century park ranger could come to experiencing what the job was like a century earlier, when rugged outdoorsmen roamed a remote landscape tasked with caring for the nation’s most precious resource.
“I got there in February, and there was no one around. It was so quiet and peaceful. Almost boring,” he said. “And then summer came.”
For more than a century, an elite group of rangers has protected Glacier National Park and the millions of people who visit it every year to experience this incredible landscape and the wonders within. For many Americans, the park rangers that inhabit their psyche are those with flat-brimmed hats who spend more of their time giving tours and answering questions. But a look at history and the present shows that it’s a much more dynamic profession, one in which a ranger could be dangling off a cliff to save an illegal BASE jumper one day and delivering a baby on the side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road the next.
The job of forest ranger dates back to 15th century England when the King would hire officers to protect crown forests and parks, keep an eye on the game, prevent trespassing and poaching and help out with the royal hunts. In the 19th century, rangers were hired to protect federal lands from many of the same threats of trespassing, poaching and illegal timber harvesting. Most forest reserves were divided into ranger districts and a single ranger would be responsible for tens of thousands of acres. The first ranger to roam what would become Glacier National Park was Frank Liebig.
Liebig was German-born and came to America in 1895, looking to make a new life on the frontier. According to C.W. Guthrie’s book, “First Rangers,” Liebig worked as a cowboy east of the Rockies for a few years but was fascinated by the forested land found west of the Continental Divide. In August 1900, he boarded a Great Northern Railway train for Belton (now West Glacier). There, he found work surveying mining claims in the area. Meanwhile, a Spanish-American War veteran named Fred Herrig had been hired as a Flathead Forest Reserve ranger to watch over everything west of the North Fork of the Flathead River. At the time, there was no ranger east of the river, so Herrig was tasked with keeping an eye on that vast interior as well, even as he had his hands full with his own territory.
That arrangement lasted only a few years until Forest Supervisor Fremont N. Haines realized he needed another ranger to keep an eye on things east of the North Fork. He hit the trail in search of a young German he had heard about surveying mining claims in the area. He found Liebig near Lake McDonald. “I’m looking for a good man to work as a ranger for Uncle Sam,” Haines told the young man. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Liebig. I hear you don’t drink or get on a spree, but the main thing is you know the country and are not afraid of anything … Would you like to tackle this job? It pays sixty a month. You board yourself and furnish your own horses.”
Liebig was leery at first, mostly because he was making more money surveying mining claims. But Haines promised that a job with the federal government would pay off in the long run. So Liebig followed the supervisor to Kalispell, renounced his German citizenship and then filled out all the paperwork to become a forest ranger. The entire package was then sent off to Washington, D.C., and Liebig went back to the woods. A few months later, he got a letter in the mail at the post office in Belton. It informed him that he had officially been hired a month earlier and he was to get to work immediately. Haines’ instructions were simple.
“The whole country is yours, from Belton to Canada and across the Rockies to the prairie between Waterton Lake and the foot of St. Mary’s Lake,” according to the letter. “You’re to look for fires, timber thieves, squatters, and game violators. Go to it and good luck.”
Liebig’s primary duty was to protect the land, which included chasing down poachers, stopping people from cutting timber illegally and putting out fires inadvertently set by tourists. Like all rangers, Liebig was required to keep a journal and report back to his superiors what he did every month. Although, as Guthrie would note, those documents were not always a full and honest account of what the rangers did.
“These journals are records of the ranger’s daily activities and were sometimes jokingly referred to as ‘liar’s diaries.’ A few early rangers told why — one time, when they were either rained out or snowed in and unable to work, they sent in a report to that effect, then were promptly docked in pay for whatever time they were counted idle. So, they never sent in a report like that again. Hail, sleet, snow, or high water, the rangers’ journals demonstrated that they worked every day,” Guthrie wrote.
But a look at Liebig’s own writings shows that he was indeed busy. He protected not just the land but also the people who were starting to recreate and explore it. Perhaps one of the most dramatic episodes occurred in 1905 or 1906 (the exact date is unclear). Liebig was coming back from a trip to the east side when he came across Gunsight Pass and through the Sperry Glacier basin, where he planned to spend the night. As he pitched his tent, a group of people ran up to him and said that a woman had fallen into a crevasse in the glacier.
Liebig climbed up onto the glacier and looked down to find the woman, presumably dead, about 30 feet down the crevasse. The ranger climbed down and, with an axe, cut the ice around the woman, at times stepping on her body to steady his own footing. He then sent the axe back up, had some rope sent down, and tied it around her. Then, the group dragged her out of the crevasse. Once she and the ranger were out (he was also pulled out with the assistance of the rope), they had to figure out how to get the body off the glacier. Four men grabbed the woman and began to haul her off, but then they got to a 20-foot drop. Realizing it would be tough to get her down in one piece, they decided to again tie the rope around her and lower her down. At some point in the operation, the woman’s body swung toward the icy rocks and whacked her head, resulting in a huge bloody gash and a scream. It turns out the woman was still alive and being slammed against the rocks brought her back to consciousness. After getting her back to camp, the group started a massive fire and filled her up with warm drinks. She went on to survive the harrowing ordeal.
Despite his admirable service to the government, Liebig’s time on the Flathead Forest Reserve would come to an end after President William Howard Taft signed the legislation creating Glacier National Park in May 1910. The transition was slow and Liebig continued to watch over the parkland through the summer and fall of that year. But in November, he was informed that he was being relieved of his duty and he had to vacate his ranger station — the very station he had built years earlier.
Replacing Liebig was a new crop of rangers — some of whom had a considerably more seedy history. Perhaps the most famous was Joe Cosley. The Ontario native had moved to Montana in the 1800s and had spent the last decade or so poaching animals and running away from the likes of Liebig. Hiring a poacher was an unusual move by the National Park Service, but Glacier’s first superintendent, Maj. William R. Logan, reasoned that “it takes a poacher to find a poacher.” Of course, there was no denying Cosley’s sportsmanship; he would often kill, skin and eat the animals he found right on the spot and the Blackfeet Indians likened him to a “panther on snowshoes.” He also knew the land that had become Glacier Park like few others and had already left his mark on much of it. According to legend, he had carved his initials on thousands of trees.
Although Cosley was on the government payroll, he struggled to quit his old ways of poaching and partying. According to legend, one day after work he sprinted from Polebridge to Waterton for a dance and then sprinted back in time for work the next morning. While that story might be a bit of a tall tale, it is true that he continued to poach animals in the park and was fired at least twice for it. After the first firing, however, he kept showing up to work and somehow kept getting paid. In 1914, he left Glacier, joined the Canadian Army and then went to Europe to fight in World War I, where, according to Cosley’s own accounting, he killed more than 60 enemy soldiers. After the war, he returned to Glacier and trapped animals for nearly a decade until he was arrested in 1929. After a few escape attempts from the arresting officer (that finally ended after the ranger “knocked him coo-coo” against a tree) he ended up in a jail cell in West Glacier. Luckily for him, Cosley still had a few friends in town who posted his bail and he set out into the woods bound for his camp in the Belly River Valley in the northeast corner of the park. The rangers caught on to Cosley’s plan and went after him. But by the time they arrived, Cosley had already grabbed his guns and furs and jumped the border, never to be seen again in Glacier Park.
Today’s rangers are a bit different from their poaching predecessors, but they still have a taste for adventure. Jim Dahlstrom, the ranger who came to Polebridge back in 2017, started his career with the National Park Service in 2000 and bounced around to a number of parks, including Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, and Pipestone National Monument. Rangers in the 21st century are required to attend a federal law enforcement school run by the Department of Homeland Security. But as Dahlstrom notes, “the job is so much more than law enforcement.”
According to the National Park Service, rangers in Glacier Park respond to about 7,500 calls during the busy season from May until October. Dahlstrom said that every day is different for a park service ranger. Some days you’re called upon to organize a search-and-rescue effort for a lost hiker, while others you’re answering visitor questions and helping a broken-down driver change a tire on the side of the North Fork Road. Dahlstrom said the best days at his job were the ones where he was able to help people.
A look through old incident reports published by the National Park Service certainly confirms that no day is ever the same. Such as on Sept. 24, 1997, when a Marion man made an illegal BASE jump off the summit of Mount Siyeh. Things quickly went sideways and his parachute got snagged on the rocks. While the man dangled off the side of the mountain, his partners went for help. A park ranger rappelled down the mountain to untangle the man and then both were lifted to the summit, where the jumper was airlifted to a hospital. The jumper was later cited for illegal activity and was ordered to pay the $9,000 it cost to rescue him. Or on June 23, 1992, when park rangers were quickly driving a pregnant park employee who was in labor to the hospital. When it became obvious they weren’t going to make it to Kalispell, they pulled over and delivered a healthy baby girl on the side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road.
Dahlstrom retired in 2024 and said that while his career in public service may not have been the most lucrative, it certainly was more adventurous. And it offered opportunities few others ever get: the chance to explore and take in one of America’s most beloved and scenic landscapes.
“It really didn’t feel like work a lot of the time,” he said.