Glacier National Park (U.S.)

Glacier National Park is a federally designated protected wilderness area spanning more than one million acres in northern Montana. The park is famous for its many glaciers, slow-moving rivers of compressed ice and snow that have dramatically reshaped the landscape over hundreds of thousands of years. Part of the American Rocky Mountains, Glacier National Park was founded in 1910 and is one of the most visited national parks in the country. Thousands of species of plants and hundreds of species of birds and animals live in the park's ecosystem. At one time, Glacier National Park was home to more than 100 glaciers, but a warming climate reduced that number considerably in the twenty-first century, with many scientists expressing concern that the park would lose all of its glaciers in subsequent decades.

Background

The Rocky Mountains were formed by colliding sections of Earth's crust between 170 and 40 million years ago. This geological activity created a mountain range that stretched for more than three thousand miles through western Canada and the United States. About 2 million years ago, massive ice sheets covered much of North America in an event called the Pleistocene Ice Age. For hundreds of thousands of years, the ice surged and retreated, carving and sculpting the mountains in the area of Glacier National Park into large U-shaped valleys and creating hundreds of lakes. While the last of the ice retreated from the region about 12,000 years ago, the park's modern glaciers were formed between 6000 and 4000 BCE. These glaciers grew larger during a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age that lasted from about 1300 to 1850 CE. Glaciers form when years' worth of snow and ice accumulate on each other, compacting and mixing with rock and sediment. The frozen mass begins to slowly move downhill under its own weight, becoming a "river" of ice and rock eroding and carving the surrounding landscape.

The first humans are believed to have lived in the region of Glacier National Park about 10,000 years ago. By the time French and English fur trappers journeyed to the region in the eighteenth century, the Blackfeet, Salish, and Kootenai Native American tribes had long called the area home. During the nineteenth century, miners and settlers moved west in increasing numbers, spurred on by the completion of the Great Northern Railway in 1891. Seeking more space, the US government signed treaties with the Indigenous peoples of the area, displacing them to reservations and acquiring much of their land. In 1895, the government paid the Blackfeet $1.5 million for their portion of the region.

Overview

As miners, loggers, and settlers competed for resources across the American West, environmental and political leaders realized much of the natural beauty of the region could soon be endangered. Inspired by a growing conservation movement in the United States, President Howard Taft designated a 1,583-square-mile area in northern Montana as Glacier National Park in 1910. It was the tenth national park in the nation's history. The park's boundaries technically stopped at the Canadian border, but its natural features continued on into southern Canada where they were designated Waterton Lakes National Park by the Canadian government. In 1932, the two nations declared the entire area Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Under the cooperative effort, the United States and Canada share in the scientific and wildlife management of the park. The area was named a United Nations World Heritage Site in 1995.

Together with Waterton Lakes and Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, Glacier National Park forms the Crown of the Continent, an ecosystem considered one of the largest and most diverse in North America. Glacier is home to almost two thousand plant species, including some indigenous to the Pacific Coast, Arctic, and American Southwest. Among the more than seventy species of mammals that inhabit the park are gray wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and bobcats. One of Glacier's most well-known animals, the grizzly bear, is the dominant predator in the ecosystem. The park has the largest population of grizzlies in the lower forty-eight states. Almost three hundred species of birds and twenty-four species of fish also live in the park.

Glacier National Park features 175 mountains, with the tallest six reaching heights of more than 10,000 feet. The highest peak in Glacier is Mount Cleveland at 10,448 feet. Water runoff from the 8,020-foot Triple Divide Peak feeds rivers and streams that flow into the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Hudson Bay. It is the only spot in the United States that sends water to three oceans—Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic. Of Glacier's 762 lakes, 131 have been named, the largest of which is Lake McDonald at 9.4 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. The park also has 151 trails that stretch for more than 745 miles. A scenic roadway known as Going-to-the-Sun Road is a popular tourist attraction at the park. The road was first completed in 1932 after almost a decade of construction and runs through the mountains for more than 50 miles. In 2021, nearly 3.1 million people visited Glacier National Park, making it the tenth most visited national park in the United States.

When Europeans and Americans first traveled to the area in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they recorded about 150 glaciers scattered across the region. Since then, lower winter snowfall totals and warmer temperatures have significantly reduced the park's signature ice sheets. By 1968, the number of glaciers had fallen to about fifty; by 2020, the park had only twenty-six named glaciers, many of which had shrunk considerably in previous decades. The largest of the park's glaciers, Blackfoot Glacier, measured 0.7 square miles in 2022. Researchers say natural temperature cycles combined with human-made global warming are responsible for the shrinking glaciers. Glacier National Park underwent such significant changes at the beginning of the twenty-first century that scientists at that time predicted the last of the park's glaciers could disappear by 2030. In 2019, after the release of new research, many scientists backed away from their prediction of glacial disappearance in the park by 2030, but noted that glacial melt was still ongoing throughout the region.

Bibliography

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"Causes and Consequences of Climate Change at Glacier National Park." National Park Service, 10 Oct. 2024, www.nps.gov/articles/000/causes-consequences-of-climate-change-at-glacier-national-park.htm/. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"Crown of the Continent Ecosystem." The Trust for Public Land, www.tpl.org/our-work/crown-continent-ecosystem#sm.001swymvi3ljfq2109l10n7mfaet6. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"Glacier National Park." National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/glacier-national-park/. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"Glaciers/Glacial Features." National Park Service, www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciers.htm. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Leftridge, Alan. The Best of Glacier National Park. Farcountry P, 2013.

"Overview of Glacier National Park's Glaciers." National Park Service, 1 Aug. 2022, www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciersoverview.htm. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"Top 10 Most Visited National Parks." National Geographic, 9 May 2022, www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/article/most-visited-parks-photos. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Wines, Michael. "Climate Change Threatens to Strip the Identity of Glacier National Park." New York Times, 22 Nov. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/us/climate-change-threatens-to-strip-the-identity-of-glacier-national-park.html?‗r=0. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Yenne, Bill. Glacier National Park. Arcadia Publishing, 2006.