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Although it was reserved as a national treasure in 1910, Glacier National Park in Northern Montana on the boundary between U.S.A. and Canada was actually created over one billion years ago. Its million acres of untouched wonder serve as a home to countless wildlife and as a vacation destination to more than a million people every year.

Imagine a great river, perhaps many miles long, stretching from the very top of high mountains down to the wide valleys below. It is not a river of sparkling clear water but of freezing ice. That is a valley glacier. The movement of the glacier is slow in its flow that is measured in inches a day, rather that the speed of miles per hour.

A glacier moves down the hills and runs along the valleys much as a mass of solid tar would move down a slope. Like an enormous broom, a glacier sweeps up rock and other detritus in its path. Because a glacier sweeps before it all the loose material in its path, it tends to deepen the valley, which it traverses. It polishes the rocks and marks them with scratches, or striate'.

The lower end of a glacier is sometimes very steep. From under it comes a stream of ice-cold water, formed by the melting of the glacial ice. Many rivers begin as such streams.

In time, the ice melts faster than glacier advances. Here the glacier stops and the river begins, if the glacier is on the land. Glaciers, which occupy mountain valleys, are termed valley glacias'. These are familiar in the Swiss Alps and the mountains of the Western USA.

The Glacier National Park was name for more that fifty glaciers found there. These beds of ice are the remains of a large system of mountain glacier that covered the area at one time. Some of the glaciers located in the park are but a few acres in size, but other cover much larger areas. Blackfoot Glaciers, the largest in the park covers an area of about three square miles. (1)

Outside of the glaciers, Glacier National Park is noted for it ranges of mountains, whose snowcapped peaks from picture- like natural backdrops. The highest peak is Mount Cleveland (10438 ft) at the northern part of the park. Other mountains over 10,000 ft include Kintla Peak, Mount Siyeh, and Mount Stimpson. The famed Going-to-the-Sun Road', a National Historic civil engineering landmark, traverses through the heart of the park and crosses the Continental divide, allowing visitors breathtaking views of the rugged Lewis and Livingston mountain ranges, as well as dense forests, alpine tundra, waterfalls and two

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