Grinnell’s Glacier: A look at the man behind the Glacier National Park landmarks

Grinnell Glacier. Grinnell Lake. Grinnell Point. These are all treasured landmarks in Glacier National Park. But who was George Bird Grinnell? This story takes a look at the man and his historic accomplishments in Glacier and across the West.

By ETHAN VANDEN BOSCH

Hungry Horse News

George Bird Grinnell – “The Father of Glacier National Park” – was born Sept. 30, 1849, in Brooklyn, New York to George Blake Grinnell and Helen A. Lansing

Grinnell was the oldest of six siblings. When he was 10, his younger siblings Frank, Mort and Helen were infected with Scarlet Fever, the three later survived, but his unpublished manuscript “Memories” stresses the fear he and his family felt battling the illness.

According to “Memories” In 1862, Grinnell started school at Churchill Military School in Sing Sing, New York (now Ossining, New York) where he began hunting for the first time.

“It must have been 1860, or possibly 1861, when I was 11 or 12 years old, that I first began to go shooting,” he wrote. Hunting was one of Grinnell’s introductions to the outdoors, which continued to foster his love for the woods. His uncle William Grinnell gave him his first double-barreled shot gun two years later.

Grinnell, like many of his family members, attended Yale University. According to “Memories,” throughout his schooling, he passed his exams with, in his words, with “flying colors.” 

During his senior year, Grinnell and a few other students went on an expedition to the West led by Professor O.C. Marsh, the group hoped to uncover fossils.

“The party consisted of a dozen men and boys. It was gone from New York five or six months; covered a great area of territory, and brought back most valuable collections,” he wrote of his time in his manuscript.

Bill Cody (known as Buffalo Bill) was a post-guide for the expedition at McPherson, Kansas giving the group directions and information about the area. Grinnell returned home to New York on Thanksgiving Day of 1870.

On another trip, Grinnell and his friend Luthor North joined 4,000 Pawnee Natives for their annual “Summer Buffalo Hunt” in 1872. He had enjoyed their company and admired their culture. According to his manuscript, the event crystallized his interest in Indigenous culture, and he continued his life as a student of native culture. His time with Pawnee Natives led him to write one of his popular works “Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales.”

In 1874, Grinnell accompanied Professor Marsh to the Black Hills of South Dakota to once again look for fossils. 

“The Black Hills were then a region of unknown mystery,” Grinnell. “The trip to the Black Hills occupied about 60 days. We started to the southwest, crossing the cannonball, Grande, and Moreau Rivers, and finally reached the Black Hills,” he wrote.

The expedition didn’t prove particularly fruitful. 

“We got back to command extraordinarily hungry and bringing with us no fossil except a part of the lower jaw of a rhinoceros,” Grinnell recalled.

Spring of 1875 was the first time Grinnell visited Montana, he recalled.

Col. William Ludlow asked him to conduct reconnaissance around the area, but Grinnell saw the opportunity to look for fossils and enjoy the scenery. He reached Fort Carroll (Fergus County in the present day). He took his classmate and good friend E.S. (Edward Salsberry) Dana because Dana had never visited the west. The two men set off with supplies and what Grinnell called “condemned army horses.” The two spent a season looking at geological structures near Lewistown. The two returned home in December of that year.

The next year Grinnell received a telegram from Lt. Col. George Custer asking Grinnell to accompany him to the Big Horn Mountains. Grinnell wrote back saying it would be impossible for him to go. Grinnell’s own manuscript shows how disinterested he was in a military expedition.

“It was thought also, that on a military expedition such as this, there would be no opportunity to collect fossils nor even to search for new localities where collects might be made later,” he wrote.

Dying was also a factor.

“Had I gone with Custer I should in all probability have been mixed up in the Custer battle,” he wrote.

It was a good decision, as Custer was killed in the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

In 1873, Grinnell began his tenure at Forest and Stream in New York, an outdoor journal concerned with conservation and the preservation of the natural world. He became editor in 1880.

In a notable article “What We May Learn From the Indian” he outlines the communal hunting and systematic laws Indigenous people used to maintain a healthy relationship with the land. 

“In some other ways the Indian saved the game and taught a lesson of thoughtfulness when hunting,” Grinnell wrote. Grinnell later became the owner of Forest & Stream he worked as editor and owner until 1911 when he eventually left the journal. 

One year, Grinnell and Ludlow spent time in Yellowstone National Park, where they both saw a significant rise in hunting for hides. As an established hunter, Grinnell disdained people who “hunted by the wagon load without regard to sex or season.”

Grinnell considered himself a student of Indigenous life, and he admired the culture’s reluctance to exploit the natural wildlife in an area. His letter to Col. Ludlow titled “The Letter of Transmittal” addressed the serious problem of overhunting big game.

“It may not be out of place here to call your attention to the terrible destruction of large game, for hides alone, which is constantly going on in those portions of Montana and Wyoming through which we passed. Buffalo, elk, mule deer, and antelope are being slaughtered by thousands each year,” he wrote to Ludlow. 

Grinnell was one of the first people to address the extermination of the American Bison, and his letter was sent to Congress in hopes of increasing enforcement of already existing hunting laws. Later in the letter he comments on the U.S. Military’s complacency on the overhunting of American Bison as they were in Yellowstone National Park at the time. 

“All, I think would be glad to have this wholesale and short-sided slaughter put to a stop to… It is certain that, unless in some way the destruction of these animals can be checked, the large game so abundant in some localities will ere long be exterminated,” he wrote Ludlow. 

The overhunting of the big game prompted Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt to start the non-profit “Boone and Crockett Club” on Dec. 21, 1887. 

The club advocates for fair chase hunting in the pursuit of habitat conservation, and the club itself is the oldest wildlife and conservation-centered organization in North America.

According to his manuscript in 1885, Grinnell came to the Glacier Park area as an established conservationist. Grinnell came to know, respect, and defend the Blackfeet Tribe against illegal grazing. The tribe gave him the name “Fisher Hat” in admiration of his character

His work with Indigenous populations culminated in the negotiations of The Ceded Strip. On Jan. 25, 1894, Blackfeet agent Capt. Lorenzo Cooke addressed 32 influential members of the tribe. The previous two years saw an increase in white settlers secretly prospecting in the mountains on the western edge of the tribal territory. News of copper, silver, and gold disturbed Grinnell who wrote later that spring, “Paradise may be invaded by mines.”  

Capt. Cooke asked the tribe to consider selling the land as a solution to the constant trespassing of white settlers. According to the “Passing of the Great West: Selected Papers of George Bird Grinnell,” The Blackfeet Tribe agreed only if Grinnell and Charles E. Conrad, a Kalispell banker, negotiated on their behalf. 

However, the cat was already out of the bag and Tribal police were chasing trespassers all across Blackfeet land. Grinnell addressed Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith saying, “The discovery of mines has resulted in a continuous chasing around by Indian police, who are active in driving white people out of the country.” 

By Sept. of 1894, the Blackfeet Tribe and the government were in negotiations over the land, which amounted to most of the east half of Glacier National Park.. The tribe was paid $1.5 million for the land with interest. Grinnell noted that everyone seemed satisfied with the results. 

Grinnell went back to New York later that year and he was reviewing his role in the proceedings. “It grieved me to think of that beautiful country being defaced by civilization and so-called improvements, but there seemed no way to avoid facing conditions which existed,” he wrote in one of his papers.

Remnants of old mines are still evident today in Glacier.

According to “The Passing of the Great West: Selected Papers of George Bird Grinnell,” Grinnell later rushed to Congress to persuade them to set aside an area for the Lewis & Clark National Forest Preserve

Grinnell’s first trip to the Glacier Park area was in 1885 when he explored the Swiftcurrent Valley.  He would return to Glacier two years later and wax poetic about the journey.

“How often, in dreams of the night or day, have I revisited these scenes during the years that have passed since I last left these happy shores,” he wrote in his diary.

Grinnell met with J.B. “Jack” Monroe, a guide in the Glacier Park area who would become Grinnell’s favorite guide and friend, Lieutenant John Henry Beacom, and James Willard Shultz, a fur trader in the area at Lethbridge to begin their journey. The group started up Swiftcurrent Valley and they camped for a while at various lakes. 

“We camped at the head of the lake intending tomorrow, if fair, to try to make it up the glacier. Beacom proposes to call this Grinnell’s Glacier. I protested, and he may not carry out his intentions,” Grinnell wrote in his diary. That was the earliest account of the naming of the glacier, and looking at Beacom’s 1887 diary confirms it was he who gave the glacier its name.

“I estimate this glacier is at least a mile in width, where visible. The thickness of this mass of ice can scarcely be less than 100 feet and may be much more,” Grinnell said in his diaries.

Historian John Taliaferro describes the adventure: “Both Grinnell and Beacom carried cameras and took pictures of the glacier looming above them. Grinnell had very little experience with the delicate plates and sensitive shuttering, and his photographs would prove a disappointment.” 

“Fortunately Beacom was better skilled, and several of his images yet survive, revealing a husky, glowering glacier–an ominous benchmark that would measure the dramatic retreat forthcoming over the next century and a half.” 

The group was unable to reach the upper section of the glacier, so they chose to stick to the lower parts. In this lower section, the group strolled across a bighorn sheep, Grinnell loaded his gun, got on one knee and shot the animal. They soon began their descent down the mountain for it was getting dark out.

“A most important day, for we reached the glacier, discovered a new lake, a most beautiful falls, true moraines at the foot of the glacier, and killed a superb ram,” Grinnell wrote in his diary that night. 

On Jan. 5, 1905, Grinnell, Harriet Hemenway, and T. Gilbert Pearson founded the Audubon Society, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the preservation of bird populations and their habitats. His work with the Audubon Society directly helped with the founding of Glacier National Park.

In Grinnell’s journeys to the Glacier Park area, his wife Elizabeth C. Grinnell accompanied him as a photographer. Her work has since been collected as one of the first Glacier photographers. 

According to “Grinnell’s Glacier,” the preservation of the Glacier area was beginning to take root within the Flathead Valley; however, it didn’t go without opposition. Promising oil risings offered an economic incentive to oppose the national park status Grinnell and others were working towards. 

On Dec. 11, 1907, Sen. Thomas Carter introduced the first bill to give the area national park status, but it was met with significant backlash by the general population of the Flathead Valley. 

In a letter written by lawyer Sidney M. Logan, he viewed the legislation as an injustice to the residents of the Flathead Valley. He cited the loss of possibly valuable minerals and fear of military control as what happened in Yellowstone National Park. After receiving strong opposition, Sen. Carter then rescinded the bill. After updating the bill he introduced a new one two months later. 

After Grinnell heard Sen. Carter proposed a new bill, Grinnell rallied all of their respective people to come out in support of the bill. “Tell the Club something about why Senator Carter’s bill should pass,” Grinnell wrote in a letter to the secretary of the Boone and Crockett Club. Grinnell also took to readers of Forest & Stream to come out in support of the bill. 

According to “Grinnell’s Glacier,” Grinnell had left for Oklahoma to live and study with the Cheyenne, and when he returned, he found the House of Representatives had neglected to pass the bill. After the second attempt to secure national park status for the glacier area, Grinnell turned to Louis Hill, president of Great Northern Railway who saw great business ventures in the creation of a national park to help. 

“If you have any influence with House members, I wish you to bring it to bear,” Grinnell said to Hill.

Sen. Carter introduced a third bill to grant national park status to the Glacier area. Senate Bill 2777 was introduced on Jun. 26, 1909, with successful lobbying this grassroots effort finally saw Grinnell’s 25-year-long dream fulfilled. President Taft signed the bill into law on May 11, 1910, and Glacier was formed.

At age 76, Grinnell was awarded the “Distinguished Service Medal” by President Calvin  Coolidge in 1925. The award is normally given to people who served in the military, but Coolidge thought his service to the outdoors helped shape the country differently. However, the award is now called, the “George Bird Grinnell Memorial Award for Distinguished Service in Natural Resource Conservation.” 

Grinnell suffered a heart attack at his home in New York in 1929 and would die 11 years later on Apr. 11, 1938. His New York Times Obituary reads: “Dr. George Bird Grinnell, author, naturalist, and explorer, often called “The Father of American Conservation” died early yesterday in his home.” Grinnell’s legacy of preservation and conservation is echoed in people’s love for the natural world today.

Lane Gyger (seen bottom right) gives scale to Mount Gould (9,557') and the Grinnell Glacier below earlier this month. Seth Anderson Photo
SETH ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Lovers at Grinnell Lake in this file photo.