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COVER
PEACE PARK
Visitors arrive at Goat Haunt in Glacier National Park. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
PRESERVING THE PEACE
Celebrating and protecting the world’s rst international peace park
WATERTON — The boat ride from the northern shores of Upper Waterton Lake, where the prai- ries of Alberta rise toward the wild Rockies of Montana, plies across emerald-green, windswept ripples from one country into another.
The M.V. International, the historic agship originally built in Kalispell before being shipped in pieces to this townsite in the heart of Waterton Lakes National Park, began carrying passen- gers in 1927. During the busy summer season, when the popu- lation of Waterton spikes from about 50 residents to more than 2,000 daily visitors, the scenic cruise from Canada into the U.S. is a popular one, carrying more than 160 people up to four times aday.
Visitors aboard the International enjoy a one-hour ride that passes sawtooth cli s, epochal geologic formations and the U.S.-Ca- nadian border, a boundary distinguished by a single-lane slice of forest cut to ground level and marked every few hundred yards by 5-foot-tall steel monuments identifying each country’s side.
Traveling the lake’s seven-mile span, the boat enters the north- ern gateway to Glacier National Park. It lands at Goat Haunt, a seasonal port of entry and ranger station tucked in the wild inte- rior of the Crown Jewel of the Continent and surrounded by soar- ing peaks, including Mount Cleveland, the tallest in the park.
For some, the boat ride to Goat Haunt, which is the only way to arrive here besides on foot, is an ideal entry into the northern- most backcountry of Glacier.
For many others, it is a pilgrimage. This remote point along the 49th parallel, the backbone of the continent that happens to tie two countries together, holds a distinct prominence dating back 84 years.
This is the focal point for the world’s rst international peace park.
BY DILLON TABISH
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AUGUST 31, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM