Retired park leader reflects on career

Phillip Iversen is no stranger to controversy, and the former Glacier National Park superintendent still remembers the full-page ad in the Hungry Horse News that simply read, “Iversen Must Go” after he proposed banning snowmobiles in the park.

Iversen, who now lives in Evergreen, last month released his first book, “The Centennial of a Great Idea.” In it, he chronicles his more than 30 years working in more than a dozen national parks, a career he capped off with a seven-year stint as superintendent of Glacier Park.

“It’s not intended to be a book about me, but I have experienced some historic events during my career and just thought that they ought to be preserved,” Iversen said.

Those historic events included the elimination of snowmobiles in Glacier National Park, the filming of the ill-fated movie “Heaven’s Gate” and the development of the park’s first bear management plan — which followed years of policies culminating in the famous “Night of the Grizzlies” incident before Iversen’s arrival.

“A couple of superintendents prior to me, they were still feeding bears at the dump, and people would come out in the evening and watch the feeding,” Iversen said. “It took a while to get over that effect on the bears.”

For the development plan, he said he reached out to nearly every park employee, from rangers to trail crews to interpretive guides.

“Each one of the employees touches the public in one way or another,” he said. “It was kind of revolutionary, the fact that we had so many people involved in developing it, but I think it’s still pretty much intact.”

He noted that by that point, the high-profile pair of bear maulings in 1967 had solidified public opinion around the need to more responsibly handle Glacier’s famous grizzlies, and the management plan didn’t attract much controversy.

Despite being a career federal employee born in Eugene, Oregon, Iversen nonetheless holds a view of Washington, D.C., shared by many Montanans across the political spectrum.

“The people on the ground know the situations and the local feelings, but there’s always that tendency of the regional office or the Washington office or some politician to meddle in and micromanage the park,” Iversen said. “I made a point of managing the park and consulting the regional director as little as possible. It was my job I was paid to do, so I figured I was going to do it.”

Such was his approach less than a year after coming to Glacier, when Iversen took on the sensitive issue of snowmobile use in the park.

In his book, Iversen explains how the previous head of Glacier, John Townsley, had encouraged snow machines, but Iversen began finding signs that their increasing use was causing resource damage, negatively impacting wildlife and detracting from the wilderness experience of other park users.

It was one of the first environmental impact studies conducted by the park, and after consulting with a community of stakeholders, getting his employees’ input and holding public meetings (including one in Kalispell that attracted a standing-room crowd of about 500), Iversen ultimately decided to prohibit them in Glacier.

“I think that was my best accomplishment,” Iversen said. “I don’t have anything against snowmobiles, but my feeling is they just don’t need to be everywhere.”

In his last full year as superintendent, Iversen became the subject of the local business community’s ire after he kicked out director Michael Cimino and the production crew of the movie “Heaven’s Gate.”

The film later gained notoriety in the film industry as a colossal box office bomb that brought in less than 10 percent of its budget, and gained notoriety locally for its use of the Two Medicine area of Glacier Park as a movie set.

“My patience with Mr. Cimino had reached the limit and it came to a conclusion when he slaughtered a cow in the park, an attraction for grizzly bears, and the contract time limit was exceeded by a couple weeks,” Iversen writes.

He said he “caught a lot of guff” from the Kalispell business community at the time, and an editorial in the Daily Inter Lake accused park officials of wanting to put a “fence around the park,” according to a 1979 Washington Post article on the troubled film project. Cimino even held a press conference to defend his actions and criticize Iversen.

“At the press conference, Cimino called the Glacier Park action ‘extensive nitpicking and harassment,’ which ‘cost us a great deal of money and caused a lot of problems,’ Post journalist Les Gapay wrote.

Most of Iversen’s experiences at Glacier’s helm were enjoyable, however. Every fall, once the crowds thinned out after the Labor Day weekend, he would embark on a weeklong backcountry trip into the wild landscape,

“It portrays, really, the true character of a national park,” he said. “The Grand Canyon, for example, there’s a big village right in the middle of the park. It isn’t really a park atmosphere. ... [Glacier] has been protected very nicely and of course the scenery is spectacular. It’s one of the most beautiful parks and I think one of the best-preserved.”

Iversen retired in 1980, turning down a promotion to become the superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He has since done volunteer work in the park and for the Forest Service, along with serving two terms on the Columbia Falls school board.

“Other than that, just playing golf and having fun,” he added.

He still visits Glacier Park several times a year, but said he doesn’t attempt to influence the current management. Current Superintendent Jeff Mow is doing a fine job, Iversen said, but faces a monumental challenge shared across the federal park system.

“I think the visitation to the park is getting to the point where people can’t find a place to park and stop to look around,” he said. “I think that may be the biggest challenge that’s facing all of the parks, and honestly, I don’t know what the answer is.”

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