Glacier's Camas Road earns historic listing

 The Camas Creek Cutoff Road (Camas Road) in Glacier National Park has been listed as a place of statewide historic significance in the National Register of Historic Places.

The 11.7-mile two-lane paved road runs between Going-to-the-Sun Road and the North Fork Road. The road features bridges over McDonald Creek and the North Fork of the Flathead River.

The Camas Road was constructed between 1960 and 1967 and cost approximately $2.5 million. The road was designed to provide improved access to the North Fork of the Flathead River. It was also designed as a segment of the never-completed International Loop Road to Waterton Lakes National Park.

The road was constructed under the Mission 66 program, which worked to modernize National Park Service infrastructure from 1956-66.

Over those 10 years, more than $1 billion was spent nationwide to build and improve National Park Service facilities and roads to accommodate increased visitor use.

Mission 66 projects in Glacier National Park included new housing, visitor centers, campgrounds, as well as improvements to Going-to-the-Sun-Road.

The construction of Camas Road was one of the largest Mission 66 projects in the park. It was also one of the largest entirely new roadways constructed under the Mission 66 program.

Camas Road was built partly in response to a proposal to build a large dam on the North Fork of the Flathead River.

Proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, the Glacier View Dam would have created a reservoir covering thousands of acres of the park’s land.

Park administrators hoped that by improving access and increasing visitation to the North Fork, they could prevent the construction of the dam and preserve the area’s primitive status.

Park administrators also hoped the road would provide an east-west alternative to Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Since opening in 1933, Going-to-the-Sun Road had become the park’s most popular attraction and it was feared that increased visitor traffic would soon overwhelm the road. Administrators thought that building a road to the North Fork and eventually into Canada would encourage visitors to see other parts of the park.

Neither the dam nor the International Loop Road was completed but Camas Road continues to provide visitor access to the North Fork.

The National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is the official list of places worthy of preservation within the United States. Learn more about the National Register at http://www.nps.gov/Nr.