Glacier National Park: Going-to-the-Sun Road

Apgar Visitor Center is the west end of the drive, at the four-way where Camas Road meets Going-to-the-Sun Road. Its restrooms stay open all year, and it offers water bottle filling, WiFi, bear spray and a paved path…

Just ahead, at the four-way stop, turn left onto Going-to-the-Sun Road. Straight goes back to the West Entrance.

The last mile of the westbound drive runs through young lodgepole toward the four-way at Apgar. From the visitor center, a paved path leads to Apgar Village and the foot of Lake McDonald, a good place to finish the da…

A young lodgepole forest lines the road along the foot of Lake McDonald, grown up after the fires of 1927 and 1929. Old cedar stumps survive among the thin trunks, and some of the lake views at small pullouts were cut…

On the Middle Fork of the Flathead, trains on the Great Northern line are said to have stopped on a whistle. Josephine Doody lives across the river in a remote cabin, and she makes the best moonshine on the line. Boon…

Lake McDonald is the largest lake in Glacier National Park, 9.4 miles long, a mile and a half wide and 464 feet deep, and Going-to-the-Sun Road follows its eastern shore for miles. Small pullouts on the lake side give…

Lake McDonald Lodge is the historic hotel at the head of the lake, built facing the water because its first guests arrived by boat. Today's road brings visitors to what was once the rear, so the classic view is from t…

In July of 1901 a young bride who has never climbed a mountain takes a dare on a peak above Lake McDonald that nobody has topped. Cornelia James Cannon's climb leaves behind a small bottle and a question that sits on…

McDonald Creek Overlook is a small lot and a platform above a narrow rock channel, where spring melt runs hard enough to shake the deck. The upper creek is the best-known breeding water in the lower 48 for harlequin d…

Avalanche Creek is the busiest stop on the lower road, with picnic tables, vault toilets, water and a campground. Trail of the Cedars, a flat wheelchair-accessible boardwalk loop of under a mile, runs through old west…

In 1910 Glacier hires one of its best-known poachers to guard the park. Joe Cosley wears a red sash, writes poetry, carves his initials into trees across the backcountry and knows every pass. Boone follows the ranger…

The Garden Wall is the knife-edged section of the Continental Divide that the road climbs along, named for a popular song around a campfire. Logan Creek's small lot and outhouse mark the foot of the six percent grade,…

The road under the car almost looked very different. George Goodwin, the Park Service's own engineer, has a route up the Divide and no doubts about it. Landscape engineer Thomas Vint has one look and a different idea.…

The Loop is the only switchback on the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, a tight hairpin where the valley road gives way to the narrow road cut into the Garden Wall. A small lot sits inside the curve, with restrooms…

May of 1953, on this stretch of the wall, a road crew is racing to clear the road for its June opening. Boone tells how little warning the men had, and what one old friend did on a hunch. It is a solemn tale of the pe…

Bird Woman Falls drops 492 feet from a hanging valley across the way, between Mount Oberlin and Mount Cannon, while the nearer cascades belong to Haystack Creek. The overlook was once a quarry for the road's stonework…

The Weeping Wall is a long curtain of water running down a cliff cut for the road, heavy in June and thin by August. Next to it, Big Bend's wide curve looks up at avalanche paths and the cliffs of the Garden Wall, a g…

September 1895. Government commissioners come to buy this strip of mountains from the Blackfeet, and the men across from them answer in words that are still on record. Boone tells what was asked, what was said and wha…

Oberlin Bend is the last curve below Logan Pass from the west, and one of the park's best places to see mountain goats. A partly wheelchair-accessible metal-grate boardwalk leads to a platform looking along the Garden…

Logan Pass is the top of Going-to-the-Sun Road at 6,646 feet, where it crosses the Continental Divide. The visitor center has summer water and flush toilets but no food, and the lot often fills early in the day, so dr…

On the far side of these mountains, an old sawmill sits near the Many Glacier Hotel, and the head of the National Park Service wants it gone. Stephen Mather and the Great Northern Railway have traded letters for years…

Siyeh Bend is a broad curve under Mount Siyeh, where high subalpine country gives way to east-side forest. The hikers' lot serves the long Piegan Pass and Siyeh Pass trails, and much of the road below it rides on a gl…

Jackson Glacier Overlook gives the road's best look at a working glacier, in the saddle between Mount Jackson and Blackfoot Mountain about five and a half miles away. Jackson and Blackfoot were one glacier until the 1…

Libby Collins is known as the Cattle Queen of Montana, and in the mineral rush of the 1890s she chases one more fortune with Frank McPartland as her partner. Over on Lake McDonald, one August day settles the partnersh…

Sunrift Gorge is one of the shortest walks on the road, 200 feet up a few stairs to a slot 800 feet long and 80 feet deep, cut by Baring Creek along a straight fracture. The gorge lies across the road from its pullout…

Wild Goose Island is the small rocky island on St. Mary Lake that opens Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, rising just 14 feet from the water. The overlook has parking and an accessible viewing area, and it frames Fusilla…

In 1928 a young ranger stops a rider on a forbidden trail, and she answers back. Hugh Black and Margaret James go on to build a life beside Saint Mary Lake, one small white cabin at a time, under a sign that confuses…

Two Dog Flats is the open grassland at the east foot of the mountains, where prairie meets peaks and the wind seldom lets up. It is the park's named wildlife spot on this side, best early in the morning, with grizzlie…

The drive's last stretch runs out of the mountains toward the St. Mary entrance and the prairie. Near the end of the road are the visitor center and the base of Sun Tours, a Blackfeet-owned guide service and authorize…

St. Mary Visitor Center is the east end of the drive, beside the entrance station where the mountains meet the Blackfeet Reservation. It has restrooms, water, WiFi and a bookstore in season. Visitors who still need a…