CENTRAL BRITISH COLUMBIA - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 513

600 species of flowering plants that have been identified within the park. The best time to
see wildflowers in the high meadows and forests is early August.
The rugged terrain and long, hard winters in Glacier National Park mean that resident
mammals are a tough and hardy bunch. Healthy populations of both black and grizzly bears
inhabit the park. The black bears often feed along the roadside in late spring. Grizzlies are
less common and tend to remain in the backcountry, but early in the season, lingering snow
can keep them at lower elevations; look for them on avalanche slopes.
HISTORY
In a scenario familiar throughout western Canada, the proclamation of Glacier National
Park was influenced by the Canadian Pacific Railway's desire to see tourists use its rail line.
For CPR engineers, finding a passable train route through the Columbia Mountains proved
a formidable challenge. The major obstacle was the threat of avalanche—high snowfall was
coupled with narrow valleys and steep approaches from both east and west, all attributes
spelling danger. Through three summers, rail workers toiled with picks and shovels, finally
completing a railbed on November 7, 1885. A national park was proclaimed, protecting
the pass and surrounding wilderness and, much to the delight of the cash-strapped CPR,
bringing visitors to the area—by rail of course. For the next three decades, the CPR oper-
ated passenger and freight services over the pass, thrilling thousands of pioneer passengers.
Unfortunately, despite railway engineering ingenuity, frequent and devastating avalanches
took their toll, killing over 200 workers in the first 30 years of operation. Forced to stop the
carnage, the CPR rerouted the line, tunneling under the pass in 1916. The rerouted line by-
passed the park's most spectacular scenery, and the number of visitors to the park dropped
dramatically.
In the early 1950s, a new team of engineers tackled the same problem—this time in an
effort to build a highway across the pass. The tunnel approach that had worked for the rail-
way was deemed impractical for a highway, so a new solution to the avalanche danger was
required. In 1962 a route through the national park and over the pass was completed—this
time with the addition of concrete snowsheds over sections of the highway.