“tremendous mountainland” on their tour — Glacier National Park Quarter Coin

Today, the Glacier National Park Quarter Coin remembers the bankers’ 1915 tour of the northwest, in particular the park, using the Great Northern Railway.

One particular tour arrived at Glacier National Park on August 31, 1915.

The Banker’s Magazine of August 1915 provided details of the upcoming tours:

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Tours to the Bankers Convention at Seattle and California Expositions.

Under the auspices of the New York State Bankers Association, the New York Central lines will send out four special trains to the convention of the American Bankers Association at Seattle, September 6-10, giving opportunities for visiting the expositions at San Francisco and San Diego, as well as many points of interest on the way.

The tours, which in each case will be accompanied by a representative of the passenger traffic department of the railroad, have been arranged via the New York Central Lines under the official authorization of the Transportation Committee, and cover various routes west of Chicago, giving opportunity to visit many of the places of scenic and historic interest in the western part of the United States.

The tours, which are summarized herein, cover all expenses, including round trip railroad and Pullman transportation, hotel accommodations, side trips, together with all meals en route; in fact all necessary expenses except hotel accommodations and meals at Seattle and meals at San Francisco.

The New York State bankers extend a particular invitation to bankers throughout New England, the South, and the Eastern States contiguous to New York, to join with them in this tour, as there is every promise of a most delightful and interesting trip in congenial company.

The tours are under the direction of the New York State Bankers Association, and full information may be obtained regarding them from the chairman of the association’s transportation committee, Mr. George E. Lewis, assistant cashier of the Hanover National Bank, New York, or of Mr. W. J. Henry, secretary New York State Bankers Association, 11 Pine street, New York.

For the convenience of those desiring to take advantage of these trips, they have been divided into different sections, as given herewith.

Tour “A”—Red Section

The Red Section will leave New York via the New York Central Lines on Saturday, August 28, arriving Chicago on the afternoon of August 29.

From Chicago the line of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. is used to St. Paul, traversing the rich farming country of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

From St. Paul the trip is continued via the Great Northern Railway across Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana to Glacier National Park, the most recently acquired of Uncle Sam’s great national reservations, which is reached on the evening of August 31.

Two days will be spent in a tour of the park.

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On the way to the Seattle Convention of the American Bankers’ Association a number of bankers’ special trains are to follow, via Glacier National Park, the “See America First” route of the Great Northern Railway.

Two specials for the New York bankers, one special for the Chicago bankers, one special for the Missouri bankers and one for the Kansas bankers are among those arranged for.

Bankers who follow the Great Northern’s “See America First” route will see a great deal of America.

Glacier National Park, at which all of the bankers’ trains will tarry, in many respects is the most wonderful of the national playgrounds.

Glacier National Park.

At a distance of 1,091 miles from St. Paul, at an altitude of 4,785 feet, the Great Northern reaches the log-built station of Glacier Park, the gateway to Glacier National Park.

The tremendous mountainland of Glacier National Park sits high up in the splendid Rocky Mountains of northwestern Montana—on and about the Continental Divide.

Glacier Park’s mountains outstretch from the Great Northern’s tracks all of the way northward to the Canadian border, and from the reservation of the Blackfeet westward to the Flathead River—a mountainland that is 1,525 square miles in extent.

With Mount Cleveland (10,438 feet), Mount Jackson (10,023 feet) and Mount Siyeh (10,004 feet) its generals, a veritable army of magnificent peaks, giants of the Divide, for all time is encamped here—peaks that rear from 8,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level, with their bases thickly forested up to the timber line, and their limestone crests by sun and wind painted in many colors—reds and browns and blues and purples.

The “roof of America” is what this region is oftentimes termed: from these heights waters start on journeys west to the Pacific Ocean, north to Hudson’s Bay and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Atop these mountains are eighty living glaciers that are every bit as inspiring as those ice fields Americans have been crossing to Switzerland to see; of these the great Blackfeet Glacier has an area of five square miles.

Up in these high places, too, are droves of nimble-footed Rocky Mountain goats —and deer and elk.

Among the mountains, in the forested valleys where gorgeous wild flowers riot, are 250 glacier-fed blue mountain lakes and scores of noble cataracts and rollicking mountain streams.

Many of nature’s phenomena are within the Park beside—like the Iceberg Lake, where, between flower carpeted shores, icebergs serenely float the summer through.

At Glacier National Park all of the bankers specials will tarry a while— some of them for twenty-four hours, others for forty-eight. During these stop-overs memorable pilgrimages will be available to the bankers.

By auto-stages they may journey up the fifty-mile automobile highway to the mammoth new mountain hostelry, the “Many Glacier.”

Here, in the Park’s heart, are beautiful McDermott Lake and Falls, Grinnell Mountain and Glacier, Gould Mountain, Mount Wilbur, Iceberg Lake, Swiftcurrent Pass and the Garden Wall.

By launch they may cruise up St. Mary Lake, the finest of the mountain lakes of America, to Going-to-the-Sun Chalets where grand Going-to-the-Sun Mountain is, and Little Chief and Red Eagle and Fusilade and Citadel.

Or by auto-stage they may gain the Two-Medicine country, where the Two Medicine Lakes and Trick Falls and Rising Wolf and Appistoki and Triple Divide are.

On westward from Glacier Park the Great Northern sets its course along Glacier Park’s southern boundary, the only transcontinental track in the United States that lies alongside a national playground.

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The Glacier National Park Quarter Coin shows with an image of the park’s Mount Wilber and McDermott Lake, circa 1915.

Glacier National Park Quarter Coin