Glacier Park welcomes 100 millionth visitor

With the sun shining Thursday on a bluebird day in Glacier National Park, the long-awaited opening of Logan Pass also brought the 100 millionth visitor in the park’s 105-year history.

Becky Janssen of Bakersfield, California, was greeted Thursday morning by park officials and a gaggle of media at the West Glacier entrance station, where she arrived with her son and daughter for their first-ever trip to the park.

As a representative of the 100 millionth visitor, Janssen was presented with a free federal lands pass and a basket of gifts and gift certificates from the park’s partners.

Asked how she felt when park officials came up to tell her the news, she laughed and said, “I thought I was in trouble!”

She said she first visited the area with her family earlier this year, falling in love with the Flathead Valley and quickly selecting Whitefish as their summer home.

“We came up for the week and fell in love with it,” she said during a press conference at Apgar Visitor Center. “I came up three weeks later to look for rentals.”

Appropriately, her 10-year-old daughter, Gretchen, was wearing a shirt emblazoned with “#winner.” Her son, 14-year-old Pierce, described the historic moment as “weird.”

Park Superintendent Jeff Mow thanked park staff, concessioners and partners for helping make Glacier one of the most-visited national parks in the country.

“The park service has a long legacy of managing these iconic landscapes, but I want to mention that we don’t do it alone,” said Mow, adding that the park had its 1 millionth visitor in 1969. The park began keeping visitation statistics in 1911. The visitor count is an estimation based on vehicle counts rather than individual visitors.

Last year, Glacier was the 10th most-visited national park in the country.

Following a brief press conference, the trio was whisked away aboard one of the park’s red buses for a complimentary lunch and a first look at the pass, which is now open from the west side to vehicles.

Even without the numerical designation, other visitors to Logan Pass on opening day felt like winners.

“We felt like we really hit the jackpot, because we just got here yesterday and this is the first day Logan Pass is open,” said Valeria Gordan, a Brazil native who teaches dentistry at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “We love it.”

“Especially the snow!” added her daughter, Julia, 10, who was taking a brief hiatus from throwing snowballs at Logan Pass. “I never expected there to be snow, even at this elevation since it’s summertime.”

They had driven up with their family for a road trip that included Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. She said Glacier seemed to have the best of both worlds, likening it to a combination of the other two world-renowned parks.

The snow-covered alpine landscape also was a novel sight to the Gilley family, whose arrival in Northwest Montana came at an opportune time during their eight-month road trip.

“We never see snow like this, ever, so this is pretty amazing,” said Heather Gilley. The family is from San Antonio, Texas.

While the western half of the winding road is open to traffic, visitors should expect a short delay along a stretch of road near Dead Horse Point and the Golden Stairs, as construction crews have closed one lane to replace stone masonry destroyed by avalanches last summer.

East-side access to Logan Pass will open June 19 due to road construction.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.