Going-to-the-Sun Road: The Road That Could Not Be Built

The road that runs through Glacier National Park is unlike any road in North America. The Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, at an elevation of six thousand six hundred and forty six feet, through terrain so steep and complex that engineers originally said the road could not be built at all. Construction began in nineteen twenty one and took eleven years.

The road was finished in nineteen thirty-two and formally dedicated at Logan Pass in nineteen thirty-three. The road was built by hand, or nearly so. Workers drilled and blasted through solid rock on the Garden Wall, the glacially carved cliff that forms the western face of the divide in Glacier, hanging from ropes in some places.

For the most difficult sections there was no way to bring machinery to the cliff face. Men chipped at the rock with steel and replaced it with concrete and stone retaining walls built to blend into the mountain. The result is a roadway that seems to emerge directly from the landscape, curving through cliff faces and across streams that cascade down from the snowfields above.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road is designated a National Historic Landmark, one of the few highways in the United States to receive that recognition, honored for both its engineering achievement and its setting in one of the most spectacular landscapes on the continent. In peak summer months the road is so crowded with visitors that the park limits vehicle access and operates shuttle buses. Whitefish is the closest substantial town to the west entrance of Glacier, and the road draws much of the traffic that flows through this valley each summer.