Going-to-the-Sun Road: Fifty Miles of Engineered Audacity

When engineers first proposed building a road across the Continental Divide through Glacier National Park, experienced mountain builders looked at the terrain and questioned whether it was possible at all. The going-to-the-sun road, which runs fifty miles from the western edge of the park at West Glacier to Saint Mary on the eastern side, climbs to Logan Pass at sixty-six hundred and forty-six feet, crossing some of the most vertical terrain in the Rocky Mountains.

Work began in nineteen twenty-one. The construction problem was not merely one of altitude but of angle: the road needed to be cut into the face of the Garden Wall, a nearly vertical glacially carved cliff, for miles at a stretch. Workers hung from ropes to drill blast holes. Crews lowered themselves on wooden platforms bolted into the rock face. Almost five hundred thousand pounds of explosives were detonated over eleven years of work. The project employed hundreds of men throughout the construction period, many of whom lived in tent camps perched on the mountainside.

The final section, over Logan Pass, was completed in nineteen thirty-two. The formal dedication ceremony at the pass took place on July fifteenth, nineteen thirty-three, drawing officials and celebrating the road as one of the great engineering achievements in American history. The total cost came to about two and a half million dollars, modest by the standards of what was accomplished.

The New Deal brought further investment in the nineteen thirties, funding the reconstruction and eventual paving of sections built before nineteen twenty-five. The road was finally fully paved in nineteen fifty-two.

Today the Going-to-the-Sun Road is both a National Historic Landmark and the only way to cross the park by car. It remains closed by snow well into June most years, opening seasonally to vehicles and bicycles. Driving it is one of the more arresting experiences available in the American West.