Subdividing Glacier Park

A column G. George Ostrom picked out from September, 1970.

All sorts of rumors and non-rumors circulating these days about various industries wanting to move into the national parks and wilderness areas.

Oil companies want to drill wells in the Many Glacier area (my favorite place), mining companies would like to dig tunnels through the Chinese Wall in the Bob Marshall primitive area, timber companies just go ape over those cedar trees along the south shore of Lake McDonald, etc., etc., etc.

I understand that one oil outfit has come up with a plan to camouflage their derricks to look like hyperactive alpine spruce trees, so their existence will not seriously detract from the aesthetics of the Glacier Park environment. A mining company proposed to coat its waste dumps with an exceptionally attractive shade of nylon moss.

These magnanimous plans for meeting the needs of our well-planned economic advancement have touched me deeply, and I have thus come to realize I must also join in the new movement to provide goods and/or serviced to the consumer market. If, in performing my special type of service to the people, I should happen to make a few dollars, who would dare say me “SHAME?”

Here’s the way I see it. If an oil company says they need the oil which might be under the glacier lilies surrounding Lake Josephine, then they must be serious. After all, people do need gas to put in their cars so they can go someplace.

My job? Give ’em someplace to go. I have a proven track record as a recreational land developer, and now I stand ready to submit my finished plans for subdividing the following lakes, St. Mary, Swiftcurrent and Upper Two Medicine. We get to other lakes later.

The oil and mining interests are only guessing as to how much gross business they could generate by exploiting the resources in Glacier Park, but I luckily can lay it all right on the line. My primary projects on the three first lakes will gross out at $327,690,424.83 (secondary developments, view lots and commercial projects are not included in this figure). I may be off by 20 or 30 thousand, depending upon how many of my corner stakes are removed or destroyed by bulldozers, careless tourists and avalanches.

Conversationalist types should not be alarmed by my plans, because I have purchased several reels of Flintstone cartoons and all vacation cottages built on my new subdivisions must be copied from the architectural patterns used in these TV sketches. Anyone hiking on the mountains above the lakes will only observe a rather unusual, but nevertheless breathtaking, panorama of huge boulders, painted to match the surrounding geological structures.

Those of you who believe in the moral infallibility of really, really big, big business may signal your support by sending certified checks and money orders to my business address, Box 669, Kalispell. Upon receipt of your money, you will be mailed stock certificates in my new real estate corporation, which will have the good, honest name, GLIC, or “Glacier Land Improvement Corporation.”