John Frank Stevens and Marias Pass

The statue here honors John Frank Stevens, the civil engineer who found the railroad's way across the northern Rockies. In eighteen eighty-nine, James J. Hill's Great Northern Railway hired Stevens to locate a workable crossing of the Continental Divide. In December of that year, alone except for a Native guide who turned back in the cold, Stevens pushed into the mountains in bitter winter cold and confirmed the low, gentle grade of Marias Pass.

That discovery let the Great Northern climb the Divide with no tunnel and an easy slope, a huge advantage for moving freight. Stevens later served as chief engineer of the Panama Canal project. In nineteen twenty-five the railway unveiled this bronze statue of him near the summit, and Stevens is said to have been there for the dedication.