Glacier National Park Dubbed the "father of modern conservation," George Bird Grinnell fought for the creation of Glacier National Park and brought to national attention the slaughter of big game in the West.

45. George Bird Grinnell

After the mining and oil speculations collapsed, Grinnell, through Forest and Stream and influential friends, began a campaign to create Glacier National Park, which he called "The Crown of the Continent."

By GERALD DIETTERT for the Missoulian

George Bird Grinnell, editor of the sporting magazine Forest and Stream, was intrigued by the article he received in the summer of 1885.

The feature, titled "To the Chief Mountain," was submitted by James Willard Schultz, a rebel who had joined the Blackfeet tribe in his teens. He described hunting mountain goats and bighorn sheep in a wild, little-known region in northwestern Montana where sparkling blue lakes were "walled-in" by towering peaks. Schultz also mentioned a glacier.

That fall, Grinnell took a train for Helena and hired a wagon to Fort Benton where he met Schultz. They proceeded to the Blackfeet Agency where he hired Charles Rose, a Blackfeet also known as Otokomi or Yellow Fish, to accompany them and headed for the Walled-In Lakes.

From a camp on the shore of Upper St. Mary Lake beside Rose Creek, the three men hunted goats on Goat Mountain and Otokomi Mountain. In a blinding snowstorm, Grinnell shot a bighorn sheep with a single shot on Slingshot Mountain. From there, the party headed up the Swiftcurrent Valley to view and attempt to climb the huge glacier that would be named for him by a visiting Army lieutenant in 1887.

During this first visit, the Blackfeet made him a member of their tribe, giving him the name of Fisher Cap.

Grinnell chronicled his adventure in the pages of Forest and Stream in a series of 15 weekly articles.

He returned in 1887 with friend, George Gould, a banker from Santa Barbara, Calif., to hunt and now began to draw a map, naming additional peaks for friends and business staff.

His map, gradually to consume more of his interest than the hunting, later was borrowed by the U.S. Geological Survey, which retained most of his names. Grinnell returned to the Walled-in Lakes almost annually during the next 41 years.

In 1891 he first noted in his diary that the area should be set aside as a national park. Early in his career as editor for Forest and Stream he had waged a campaign to save Yellowstone National Park from the intrusion of the Northern Pacific Railroad and was instrumental, with many friends in Washington, in getting the Lacey Act passed, providing regulations for national parks.

Grinnell first had become interested in conservation when he accompanied Lt. Col. George A. Custer to the Black Hills in 1874 as the expedition's naturalist and the next year with the Yellowstone Expedition; in 1876, work at Yale University's Peabody Museum kept him from accepting an invitation from Custer to go on a campaign to the Big Horn Mountains.

In 1886, in the pages of Forest and Stream, Grinnell, alarmed by the use of stuffed birds on women's hats, announced the founding of the Audubon Society, dedicated to the "saving of the birds of this continent."

The following year, with Theodore Roosevelt, he founded the Boone and Crockett Club, the first sportsmen's club, which he had advocated since 1884. He had met Roosevelt in 1885 and "gave him his first direct and detailed information about the slaughter" of big game in the West. Grinnell was the club's most active and influential member, using its name and prominent members to promote fair hunting and legislation for conservation.

In 1895, Grinnell was appointed, along with William Pollock and Walter Clements, to negotiate the sale of the western portion of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation that repeatedly was being infringed upon by prospectors.

He worked for fair treatment of the tribe and later urged some form of compensation when the area became part of the national park system and usurped some of the Blackfeet's treaty rights.

The following year, he persuaded the Forestry Commission to include the region in a new forest reserve in order to curtail attempts at logging.

After the mining and oil speculations collapsed, Grinnell, through Forest and Stream and influential friends, began a campaign to create Glacier National Park, which he called "The Crown of the Continent."

Grinnell had Montana Sen. Thomas Carter introduce a bill to create the park in December 1907, but the proposal was vigorously opposed by Kalispell residents. Carter introduced a second bill in February 1908 that was passed by the Senate, but changes made by the House could not be reconciled and the bill died.

A third bill, introduced by Carter in June 1909 and supported by Montana Rep. Charles Pray, finally passed in April 1910 and was signed by President Taft on May 10, 1910.

Always humble, Grinnell noted when congratulated by friends, "To receive credit for good work well done is pleasant but a reward far higher ... comes from the consciousness of having served the public well."

His goal achieved, Grinnell sold Forest and Stream in 1911; the magazine later was incorporated with another to form Field and Stream. During the next 17 years, Grinnell added books on American Indians to those on the Pawnee and Blackfeet he had written earlier. He was known particularly for his studies of the Cheyenne.

In 1925, he received the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal. President Coolidge remarked: "Few have done as much as you, none has done more to preserve vast areas of picturesque wilderness for the eyes of posterity. In Yellowstone you prevented the exploitation and therefore the destruction of the natural beauty. The Glacier National Park is particularly your monument."

George Bird Grinnell died in 1938 at the age of 89. The New York Times called him "the father of American conservation."

- Gerald Diettert is author of "Grinnell's Glacier: George Bird Grinnell and Glacier National Park."