Wild Goose Island: The Most Photographed Half-Acre in Montana

Wild Goose Island is less than an acre. It rises from the surface of Saint Mary Lake in the shadow of the Lewis Range, and it is almost certainly the most photographed small land feature in Montana. The image appears on postcards, on National Park Service promotional materials, on the license-plate frames sold at the gift shops in East Glacier, on the covers of photography books that have nothing to do with Montana except that they needed a cover image striking enough to pull a viewer off a shelf.

The geometry is what does it. Saint Mary Lake is ten miles long, running east-west, with the Lewis Range on its south shore and the two-thousand-foot face of the Wild Goose Island ridge on the north. The island sits approximately in the center of the frame from the overlook, small enough to emphasize the scale of the water and the mountains rather than compete with them, large enough to serve as the foreground that ties the composition together. It is accessible only by water and contains no facilities. It does not need any.

The overlook itself is a short pull-off on the Going-to-the-Sun Road descent toward Saint Mary, coming from Logan Pass. It is crowded at sunrise and at sunset because the light at those hours hits the mountains behind the island in a way that is recognizable even to people who have never been here, because they have seen the photograph.

What the photograph does not convey is the cold. Saint Mary Lake is exposed to the winds that funnel through the corridor from the west, and even in July, when the beargrass is blooming on the slopes above the water, the temperature at the overlook can make you button your jacket.