Back in 1885, George Bird Grinnell rolled into northwest Montana and immediately fell in love with its rugged wilderness. Hearing that miners, loggers, and oil prospectors would ruin the land, the Boone and Crockett Club co-founder made it his personal mission to save it. He kicked off his campaign by hyping the region to wealthy East Coast elites, writing that “Far away in northwestern Montana, hidden from view by clustering mountain-peaks, lies and unmapped corner—the Crown of the Continent.”
To outmaneuver local industrial interests, Grinnell played the long game. He first secured the land as a protected forest reserve before launching a full-scale push for a national park. Quoting B&C member William Sheldon, “It early occurred to Mr. Grinnell to try to have the region set aside as a national park, and it is a matter of record that the project of Glacier National Park for the first time took concrete shape in September, 1891…” Grinnell eventually teamed up with the Great Northern Railway—who realized a park would boost train tourism—to gain serious political leverage in Washington.
Grinnell then launched an early 20th-century PR blitz. He used his magazine Forest and Stream to lobby Congress, rally B&C members, and build public pressure. As biographer John Taliaferro put it, “Glacier National Park was his baby indeed.”
The persistence paid off on May 11, 1910, when President Taft officially signed the park into law, prompting Grinnell to write: “This Park, the country owes to the Boone and Crockett Club, whose members discovered the region, suggested it being set aside, caused the bill to be introduced into congress and awakened interest in it all over the country.”
You can read the full article via Boone and Crockett here. Pretty cool.
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