History of Glacier National Park

Reservation borders the park in the east, while the Flathead Indian Reservation is located west and south of the park. When the Blackfeet Reservation was first established in 1855 by the Lame Bull Treaty, it included the eastern area of the current park up to the Continental Divide. To the Blackfeet, the mountains of this area, especially Chief Mountain and the region in the southeast at Two Medicine, were considered the "Backbone of the World" and were frequented during vision quests. In 1895, Chief White Calf of the Blackfeet authorized the sale of the mountain area, some 800,000 acres (3,200 km), to the U.S. government for $1.5 million with the understanding that they would maintain usage rights to the land for hunting as long as the ceded stripe will be public land of the United States. This established the current boundary between the park and the reservation.

Far away in northwestern Montana, hidden from view by clustering mountain peaks, lies an unmapped corner—the Crown of the Continent.

While exploring the Marias River in 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition came within 50 miles (80 km) of the area that is now the park. A series of explorations after 1850 helped to shape the understanding of the area that later became the park. In 1885, George Bird Grinnell hired noted explorer (and later well regarded author) James Willard Schultz to guide him on a hunting expedition into what would later become the park. After several more trips to the region, Grinnell became so inspired by the scenery that he spent the next two decades working to establish a national park. In 1901, Grinnell wrote a description of the region in which he referred to it as the "Crown of the Continent", and his efforts to protect the land make him the premier contributor to this cause. A few years after Grinnell first visited, Henry L. Stimson and two