The Going-to-the-Sun Road, named by Park Naturalist George C. Ruhle in 1929, is the only trans-mountain road within the boundaries of the park. It gives the visitor who is unable to get into the back country on the trails, a cross section of the beauties and scenery offered by the higher peaks and passes in the range, a view marred only by the man-made scars necessary for such an accomplishment. This road, extending from West Glacier at the western entrance to St. Mary on the eastern side, is a marvel of engineering accomplishment. This wide, two-laned, surfaced road was literally carved out of the precipitous rock mountainsides for approximately twelve miles of its fifty-mile length. This road crosses the Continental Divide on Logan Pass at an elevation of 6,664 feet, a rise of approximately 3,000 feet in elevation in the last nine miles of the climb up the west side. Robinson,

In 1915, Louis Hill signed an agreement with Walter White to provide transportation service in Glacier. White and his business partner Roy Emery formed the Glacier Park Transportation Company and provided a fleet of White Company buses that would transport visitors between railway stops and hotels. These bright red buses, with their canvas roofs that could be rolled back, each held eleven passengers. The buses proved to be very popular with visitors. Drivers of the buses were shortly dubbed “gear jammers” due to the grinding sound caused when double clutching while changing gears. Gear Jammers were required to be neatly attired in a uniform of gray britches, grey shirts with blue tie, English riding boots, and blue pea coat and cap. In the 1930s, Howard Hays, then owner of the Glacier Park Transportation Company, ordered a new fleet of buses to replace the aging original red buses—which struggled to carry passengers up to the summit of the Going-to-the-Sun Road . Hays sold his company to the Glacier Park Hotel Company in the 1950s , who soon turned the fleet over to Glacier Park Inc. The buses carried visitors up and over the pass for sixty years. Over time they were upgraded with power steering and automatic transmissions. In the late 1990s cracks appeared in the buses’ chassis, and for safety purposes they were taken out of commissions. However, a partnership between Glacier Park Inc., the National Park Service, and the Ford Motor Company—and with the aid of many private citizens—strove to save the old “Reds.” The bus bodies were placed on new chassis and updated with propane/gasoline fuel systems. In 2002 park officials launched the newly transformed fleet, allowing visitors to once again experience the thrill of riding in an historic, open-air red bus.

Credits and Sources:

Land of Many Stories: The People and History of Glacier National Park, National Park Service, Montana Hisotrical Society, Glacier Naitonal Park Fund, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Foundation, http://www.nps.gov/features/glac/LMSeTour/centennial_eTour.html, Accessed June 10, 2015.

Donald H. Robinson, Through the Years in Glacier National Park: an Administrative History,Glacier Natural History Association, Inc. In cooperation with the National Park Service, May 1960.