Apgar: Glacier Park's Oldest Gateway Village
Near Going To The Sun Road, Montana
Apgar sits at the southern tip of Lake McDonald, about one mile inside Glacier National Park's west entrance. It is named for Milo Apgar, who arrived in the eighteen nineties with a few other settlers intending to farm the valley. When farming proved impractical in the mountain terrain, Apgar and his neighbors pivoted to serving tourists arriving by Great Northern Railway at Belton, the station just outside the park.
By the early eighteen-nineties they were renting cabins, leading pack trips, and running boat tours on the lake. The park was established in nineteen ten, and Apgar became its western anchor. Fires later destroyed many of the early structures. A historic schoolhouse survives and today operates as a gift shop. Apgar remains the social center of the park's west side, with lodges, a visitor center, and the historic village clustered at the lake's edge.
