Sun Road engineer describes hardships

‘Equivalent to climbing the Washington Monument five times before getting down to the job at hand every morning.’

— Frank Kittredge

Various road projects inside the Glacier National Park were considered shortly after the Park was established in May 1910, including a road completely around Lake McDonald. A road from West Glacier, around Lake McDonald’s west shore and then up McDonald Creek to Waterton Lake could have linked spur roads to any part of the Park, one plan suggested.

But the main focus was on a road that would cross the Continental Divide and link the east and west sides of the Park. Supporters, including William Logan, the Park’s first superintendent, wanted to provide a less expensive alternative to the Great Northern Railway, which ran along the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and crossed the Divide at Marias Pass.

According to an Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) brochure, “A few local businessmen thought it would be inefficient and foolish to construct a road through the Park’s southern boundary next to the Great Northern Railroad tracks.” Until 1930, when the last piece of the Theodore Roosevelt Highway was completed over Marias Pass, cars were carried over the Divide on rail cars.

With support in place for a transmountain road inside Glacier Park, surveys in the 1910s looked at several routes, including over Swiftcurrent Pass to Many Glacier and over Gunsight Pass to St. Mary. But by 1918, National Park Service engineer George Goodwin’s route became the guideline for the transmountain road. His route followed Lake McDonald’s east shore and McDonald Creek and then climbed up to the Divide at Logan Pass with 15 switchbacks.

Congress began funding the project in the early 1920s with annual appropriations of $100,000 for the Transmountain Highway, as the road was initially named. Contracts were signed to begin construction at both ends of the highway.

Then in 1924, Congress appropriated $1 million for the project over a three-year period. Park superintendent Charles Kraebel accompanied the Park Service’s first director, Stephen Mather, for a look at the steep west approach to Logan Pass that August. Goodwin and Park Service landscape architect Tom Vint accompanied the two men. Vint strongly opposed Goodwin’s plan and lobbied Mather for only one switchback.

“As the argument continued,” the HAER brochure says, “Mather looked at Goodwin, looked at Vint, glanced at their horses, turned and stormed off toward another appointment.”

Two days later, Mather asked the Bureau of Public Roads to resolve the conflict. The Bureau sent highway engineer Frank Kittredge. Years later, Kittredge recalled driving with Kraebel along McDonald Creek to where new road ended far below the Garden Wall. It was Sept. 16, 1924, a beautiful fall day, and Kittredge was taken in by the landscape.

Calling the assignment the “culmination” of his career, Kittredge noted “how fortunate I was to be here in this, one of the choicest, wildest and most beautiful areas.” Recognizing that “the cost obviously would be heavy,” Kittredge noted that “there appeared to be no other route which would adequately show to the public the tremendous spectacle of mountains and canyons, forests and streams.” That was the single-switchback route.

Kittredge’s 32-man crew set up two base camps and went to work, often hiking several miles and climbing 2,700 feet each day — “equivalent to climbing the Washington Monument five times before getting down to the job at hand every morning,” he said. “If it happened to be snowy or wet with no good footing, and perhaps slipping back or falling down every now and then, it was equivalent in fatigue to several more climbs of the Monument.”

Cutting through brush with axes and clinging to cliffs had a toll. The crew suffered 300 percent turnover in its first three months. At one point, the resident engineer appealed to his chief for a pay raise but was turned down — at least until the chief one day got caught “clinging to the wall, knees trembling.”

“How about that raise for the boys?” the resident engineer quietly remarked.

“Give them anything you want,” the chief replied.

The survey continued “regardless of rain, sunshine or snow” until early November when four feet of new snow fell on the east side of Logan Pass.

“We had made the survey and obtained the necessary data for preparing the plans and specifications” for a road-building contract that spring, Kittredge said.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road was formally opened to the public during an elaborate ceremony held on Logan Pass on July 15, 1933.