Page 22 - Flathead Beacon // 7.8.15

NEWS
COVER
The Many Glacier Hotel was constructed by the Great Northern Railroad in 1914 and opened July 4, 1915. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
Louis W. Hill saw opportunity almost the moment President William How- ard Taft signed legislation creating Gla- cier National Park in May 1910. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, railroads across the West were using the newly established parks as a marketing tool to lure passengers aboard their trains. The Northern Pacific Railway was doing it with Yellowstone, the Southern Pacific Railroad was doing it at Yosemite and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway was doing it with the Grand Canyon.
Before the ink of Taft’s signature was dry, Hill and the Great Northern began promoting and developing the park. In order to attract wealthy easterners who often vacationed in Europe, the railroad pushed a marketing campaign using the slogan “See America First” and began likening Glacier to the “American Alps.” To play on that theme, the railroad estab- lished a system of Swiss-style chalets in the backcountry. It also built two massive luxury hotels at East Glacier Park and Many Glacier. The hotels would be where visitors began and ended their backcoun- try chalet tour.
Construction of the Many Glacier Hotel began in 1914. Like the other struc- tures in the park, the Many Glacier Hotel was built with Swiss influences to provide visitors the feel that they were in Europe and not the wilds of Montana. The most prominent features of the hotel are the 20 Douglas fir pillars brought in from Ore- gon, which can also be found at the Gla- cier Park Lodge. Unlike the ones at East
22
Glacier Park that still have their bark, the pillars at Many Glacier are bare. That’s because were dragged 50 miles from Browning, where they were unloaded from railroad flatcars, to Many Glacier. According to historian and author Ray Djuff, teams of 16 horses would drag sup- plies to the construction site on a trip that would take up to five days.
More than 400 people – most of them earning about 30 cents an hour – worked on the hotel through the winter. When it opened on July 4, 1915, it was billed as one of the grandest hotels in the West. That
year, nearly half of the 13,000 people who visited the park stayed at Many Gla- cier. Two years later, the hotel expanded, making it the largest in Montana with more than 200 rooms. The hotel had numerous amenities, including a shoesh- ine stand, a tailor, barber and even a tele- phone in every room. Room rates started at $4 per person and guests could pay an extra dollar if they wanted a room with a bath.
While most guests enjoyed a restful and relaxing stay at the hotel, a few were not as lucky. In August 1936, the hotel
almost burned to the ground when the Heaven’s Peak fire ran down the Swift- current Valley. After helping evacuate guests, hotel employees worked through the night to keep the wood structure wet and doused spot fires that cropped up around it. While the hotel was spared, numerous surrounding structures were not. The morning after the fire, the hotel manager telegraphed Great Northern headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota to tell them that the hotel had been saved. Railroad officials came back with a one- word response: “Why?” With the Great Depression hurting ticket sales, it seems the railroad could have cut their losses if the massive hotel had burned.
Less than 30 years later, in June 1964, three feet of floodwater inundated the first floor of the hotel. Amazingly, despite the flood, the hotel opened before the end of the month.
Perhaps the biggest threat to the hotel in its century of existence wasn’t fire or flood, but rather time itself. By the late 1990s, the hotel was in deplorable condi- tion and it was slowly falling into the lake. Faced with millions of dollars’ worth of repairs, some suggested it should be torn down, including former President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who told a U.S. Senate commit- tee that he would take care of the old hotel “with a can of gasoline and a match.”
Despite Babbitt’s suggestion, in 2001 the National Park Service began a multi-million dollar project to reno- vate the hotel, which is now a National
The fireplace inside the Many Glacier Hotel was designed to look like a campfire. JUSTIN FRANZ | FLATHEAD BEACON JULY 8, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM