Going-to-the-Sun road turns 75

By CHRIS PETERSON / For the Whitefish Pilot

Glacier National Park celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Going-to-the-Sun Road last week with a parade of speakers, singers and dignitaries, all topped off with a painting by Nancy Cawdry that brought $22,000 for the non-profits that serve the Park.

The ceremony was originally slated for Logan Pass, but a late, cool spring and deeper than normal snows found park crews plowing rather than enjoying the ceremony, which was moved back to Lake McDonald Lodge.

Keynote speaker Bill Dakin of Columbia Falls, himself an amateur historian and former road crew supervisor, recalled the struggle to build the highway — three men lost their lives in the construction — and the struggle to plow it every year.

Dakin recalled that mountain goats would die in avalanches the previous winter. The next spring, as the park rotary plows worked through the avalanche debris, the goat carcasses would get caught in the rotors and had to be cut out.

Speaker Tony Incoshola, director of the Salish-Pend d'Orielle Culture Committee, also recalled a tragedy. A Civilian Conservation Corp Truck had driven to Arlee to bring people to the dedication in 1933. En route the next day, the driver of the truck apparently fell asleep and two people, Louise Cullooyah and Michel Kizer, were killed instantly and many others were injured.

A third person, Andrew Many Bear, died from injuries the next spring, Incoshola said.

Those killed were remembered in a ceremony by Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal drummers.

But the event was as much celebration as it was memorial. Collector Bruce Austin brought in folks who had been at the first dedication 75 years ago in two old jammer buses.

One, a 1927 Cadillac and the other, a 1925 White.

Dr. Dan Hays, who lives in East Glacier, remembered driving the Sun Road before the buses were even built. He was sent up into the mountains to collect mountain ash berries for his father, Howard Hays, who owned the Glacier Park Transport Co. The crushed berries were the color that was replicated for the buses.

Hays, who is in his 90s, recalled being able to drive to Logan Pass before the road was completed. Before that, even, folks would drive as far as they could, and then go for hikes.

In the early years the road wasn't paved, either. When President Roosevelt came to visit Glacier in 1934, Hays recalled the road had to be watered to keep the dust down.

Jim Jensen of Kalispell remembered spending summers in Apgar and other construction camps with his family. His father, Alvin, was a construction engineer helping build the road.

As kids, they'd bum cookies from the camp cook. Each construction company had its own camp, along with a cook tent and tents for the workers. Workers brought their families with them.

One cook was scared of bears, so some of the crew put bacon grease on the steps in front of the tent. When he came out, a bear was licking off the grease.

The cook was so scared and so upset that Jensen said he walked through the back of the tent and kept on going, never to return.

"The rest of the crew was a little upset," he said. "They lost a good cook."

Gordon Doggett's father was a jammer driver in the early days of the Sun Road. His father's real name was Ennard, but people called him Jeff. Jeff was a student at the University of Texas and got a job driving the original buses that ran the road — old rigs that had to be double clutched.

Doggett had an album full of historic pictures of his father and Doggett followed his father and was also a jammer driver in the 1960s.

"How's those new buses?" his father would ask, even those "new" buses weren't so new anymore.

That's how the Sun Road works. You look at it and it brings up a memory almost instantly. It's that kind of place. Special, no matter what anyone says.

The future of the road was also a topic of the speakers. Montana Sen. Jon Tester said it was up to him and Sen. Max Baucus "to come up with the money to fix it."

A sentiment echoed by National Park Service Intermountain Director Mike Snyder. He thanked Baucus for the $83 million that's been dedicated to road reconstruction to date, but said getting the job done will take "courage, hard work and funding."

On the word "funding," he looked at the senators, which brought a laugh from the crowd.

Snyder also committed the one slip of the tongue in the event. He thanked the people of Wyoming. Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright reminded Snyder that Glacier was in Montana.

That, too, brought a laugh from the crowd.