How did the Going-to-the-Sun Road get its name? What's the difference between "the east side" and East Glacier? Take a shallow dip into place names of Glacier in this short bonus episode. Send us your questions for future episodes at glac_media_lab@nps.gov with the subject "Headwaters."

Glacier Conservancy: glacier.org Frank Waln music: www.instagram.com/frankwaln Stella Nall art: stellanall.com

---

TRANSCRIPT:

---

[mellow beat playing]

Peri Sasnett: Welcome to Headwaters. This is a science and history show from Glacier National Park.

Daniel Lombardi: I'm Daniel.

Peri: And I'm Peri.

Daniel: This show is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, as always.

Peri: And this is a bonus episode for those of you planning a trip to Glacier sometime soon.

[mellow beat fading]

Daniel: So not so much as a deep dive, as much as...

Peri: A shallow... a dip.

Daniel: A quick dip. Okay, we're going to talk about place names. [beat plays briefly] I think the place names around here can be a little confusing.

Peri: I remember when I started here and people just were throwing out, like, Many Glacier and the North Fork and the Middle Fork. It's very confusing.

Daniel: There's a lot of forks.

Peri: This is true.

Daniel: So, first of all, we're talking about Glacier National Park in Montana.

Peri: There is also a Glacier National Park in Canada, and also Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska.

Daniel: Not those. We're talking about Montana.

Peri: Okay, so just to note up front, a lot of place names in Glacier come from a lot of different languages, perhaps least of all English. Originally the landscape had a lot of names from Salish, Blackfoot, Kootenai, and Cree languages. Then, French trappers came into the area and lots of other people have come here over the years with lots of different names for many of the same places.

Daniel: So if you're encountering a name that you're not understanding right away, it might be because it's a name coming from a language that you are not familiar with.

Peri: Right, or like a direct translation from a language that is not English. I always reach for a book called "Place Names of Glacier National Park." [beat plays briefly]

Daniel: I got it right here. This is probably the best book that I know of that it's, you know, a few hundred pages of all of the place names from a park map and it's got a little bit of history of all of them.

Peri: Yeah, here's maybe my favorite quote from that book. It says, "Each language portrays a universe of its own and it will often be difficult to fit the universe of one language into the universe of another," which kind of speaks to what we were talking about earlier where all these names come from all these different languages and they don't always make sense in translation.

Daniel: Yeah, I like that. That's interesting. All right, well, with that in mind, Peri, let's, uh, start really broad. [beat plays briefly] Take me around the park. I know that the North Fork has nothing to do with like a spoon or a fork, but it has something to do with a river. So maybe start there. What's the North Fork?

Peri: Okay, so the North Fork refers to the north fork of the Flathead River, which splits into three forks. One comes down from the north along the west edge of the park.

Peri and Daniel: Confusing.

Peri: Yeah.

Peri: The Middle Fork flows along the south of the park, also confusing, and the South Fork is not in the park. Did that help?

Daniel: Uh, okay. But at any rate, they're all forks of the Flathead River and they all come together to form the main stem of the Flathead River.

Peri: Yeah, which flows west of the park towards the Flathead Valley.

Daniel: Right. Now, I hear people talk about the east side a lot. [beat plays briefly] There's more to it than that, though.

Peri: Yes, so the east side of Glacier has a series of big valleys, each with more or less confusing names. So there's Many Glacier, St. Mary, which some people call St. Mary’s, it's controversial, and Two Medicine.

Daniel: Okay.

Peri: And then there's a town called East Glacier, which is not the same as the whole east side. East Glacier also has its own history of many different names.

Daniel: Yeah.

Peri: It, at one point, was called a Glacier Station, because the railroad stops there. And it also was called Midvale.

Daniel: Yeah.

Peri: So in 1950, they changed it to East Glacier. [beat plays briefly] And we are on the west side. We are in the town of West Glacier, which is near Lake McDonald and Apgar.

Daniel: Yeah, okay. Yes, West Glacier, according to the Holterman book, was formerly called Belton, and then they changed the name just so it would be more friendly to tourists, I guess.

Peri: Or more confusing?

Daniel: Maybe. So it used to be called Belton, but today it's called West Glacier. And again, it goes without saying probably that Indigenous people have their own names for these places. The Kootenai have a word for the Belton area that means something like Spotted Foot Mountains.

Peri: Okay, so three of the main entrances to the park are [beat plays briefly] West Glacier, East Glacier, and St. Mary. I feel like we probably confused people even more about those, but.

Daniel: Well, let's zoom in. What's in between West Glacier and St. Mary?

Peri: Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Daniel: That's what everyone's here for.

Peri: This is true.

Daniel: So it's --.

Peri: A road to the sun.

Daniel: Yes, Going-to-the-Sun Road is not between East Glacier and West Glacier.

Peri: That's Highway 2.

Daniel: But between St. Mary and West Glacier is Going-to-the-Sun Road. Now, Jack Holterman here has a little bit of history on the name, Going-to-the-Sun Road. You would expect nothing less.

Peri: I would not.

Daniel: Okay, "This most unforgettable name in Glacier turns out to be a bit disappointing. Well, at least if we follow James Willard Schultz, who bluntly told the Geographic Board of Names in 1929, quote, "I myself named Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, there is no Indian legend in connection with its name."" But then Jack Holterman goes on to explain that there actually were a bunch of different Indigenous legends associated with that mountain and with similar names.

Peri: Okay, so James Willard Schultz is a big character that pops up a lot in Glacier.

Daniel: In early park history.

Peri: Yeah, and something that I learned just a few years ago is that when you look at the map in Glacier, you see a lot of names that you might think are native names for things like Going-to-the-Sun Mountain or Rising Wolf Mountain, all of these places. However, James Willard Schultz actually applied those names to all those features that probably already had different, much longer standing Indigenous names and probably many different ones from many different tribes.

Daniel: So in some ways, some of these names are kind of a blending of Euro-American early trapper explorer names mixed up with the Indigenous names that existed at that time.

Peri: Yeah, and confusingly, James Willard Schultz did a combination of naming things because he thought certain names sounded cool, but also naming places in honor of actual Indigenous people.

Daniel: People he was friends with.

Peri: Yeah, his contemporaries.

Daniel: [beat plays briefly] Yeah, so I guess we've just made this all more confusing than it started.

Peri: I'd like to think we've sparked some interest, perhaps, for people.

Daniel: At the very least, all I can say is, you know, take out your park map and ask some questions.

Peri: Yeah, there's a lot of overlapping eras of history here and a lot different cultures that have been a part of this landscape.

Daniel: And names really kind of capture all of that history in an interesting way.

Peri: Totally.

Daniel: Well, this has just been a quick dive into some park names and history. We'll be releasing some new episodes soon, so stay tuned.

Peri: And if you have more questions in the meantime, or if you wanna try and stump the ranger, we love trivia questions.

Daniel: So you can send us an email.

Peri: Yes. At glac underscore media underscore lab at nps dot gov.

[mellow beat playing]

Daniel: We'll put that in the show notes, too.

Peri: If you want to learn more about what the Glacier Conservancy does, you can visit their website at glacier.org.

Daniel: You can also just support the show directly by leaving a review in Apple podcasts. It used to be called iTunes, but Apple podcast or, you know,

Peri: You're really dating yourself.

Daniel: Whatever app you use for podcasts, go leave us a review, even if you haven't listened to all of Headwaters yet, you're not sure you like it.

Peri: Just give us five stars anyway.

Daniel: Yeah, and then go back and listen to the past five years of episodes that we have. There's a lot of good stuff out there and we got more coming, so stay tuned.

Peri: If you like the show, tell your friends about it.

Daniel: Thanks for listening!

[mellow beat fading]

Bonus | How the Going-to-the-Sun Road Got Its Name, and More!