Great Northern Railway
19
MENTIONS
11
EPISODES
8
PODCASTS
Search complete. 19 mentions across 11 episodes found for "Great Northern Railway".
Oct 27, 2026
Karen SmithHOST
Not everyone knows about it, whereas those other hotels book up, what, 12, 13 months ahead of time.
Matt SmithHOST
But this one, Belton Chalet, was one of the logs that's built by the Great Northern Railway Company to attract people to the park and have a place for them to be when the trains brought them there.
Karen SmithHOST
It was actually the first lodge out of all those lodges that the Great Northern Railway built.
Karen SmithHOST
It was built between 1909 and 1913 under the guidance of the chairman of the board, Lewis Hill.
Matt SmithHOST
And in the early days, the building that houses the restaurant and bar was actually the Chalet.
Karen SmithHOST
Or
Matt SmithHOST
experiences.
Karen SmithHOST
So this was also built by the Great Northern Railway.
Ken ChesterHOST
And I'm still kind of a railroad fanatic.
Ken ChesterHOST
The first one goes from Chicago to Seattle over the old Great Northern Railroad, which is now Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and it's called the Empire Builder.
Ken ChesterHOST
I've been to the West Coast.
Ken ChesterHOST
I've been to Seattle.
JoshHOST
incredible, incredible style and design.
JoshHOST
And you said it, and I want to point people to another couple of episodes we have on the history of the Great Northern Railroad and the part it played in the park.
JoshHOST
because the vehicles, these getting to the park by personal automobile changed the face of the park, how tourists visited it.
JoshHOST
Before that, you could only get here by railway.
EricaHOST
This is a man named Louis Hill.
EricaHOST
He ran the Great Northern Railway, and what he wanted was people buying train tickets, so he built hotels along his tracks so you'd sleep in one of his hotels every night of your trip.
EricaHOST
And he pushed Congress to make this a national park.
speaker_2UNKNOWN
Wait, the train company wanted the park?
Shane WatersHOST
Then the railroad came.
Shane WatersHOST
James J. Hill was pushing the Great Northern Railway across northern Montana.
Shane WatersHOST
He needed division points.
Shane WatersHOST
A French-Canadian rancher named Simon Pepin owned the right piece of ground.
Mike CoreyHOST
[dramatic music] In late February 1910, passengers aboard the Seattle Express from Spokane to Seattle headed west up into the Cascade Mountains towards Stevens Pass and the summit.
Mike CoreyHOST
It had been a rough winter, and the Cascade route run by the Great Northern Railway was a troublesome one with frequent delays.
Mike CoreyHOST
Both the Seattle Express and a mail train became stranded in the mountains outside the Cascade Tunnel.
Mike CoreyHOST
They would sit on the tracks in a fierce blizzard for six days.
Mike CoreyHOST
The men of the Great Northern Railway worked feverishly to clear the tracks with their massive rotary snowplows and teams of shovelers, but this time the mountain would win.
Mike CoreyHOST
As the weather warmed slightly, avalanches began to fall.
Mike CoreyHOST
Around 1:45 AM on the morning of March 1st, an avalanche devastated the Pullman cars stranded at the depot town of Wellington, killing 96 men, women, and children.
Mike CoreyHOST
This avalanche remains the deadliest in US history.
SarahHOST
Yeah.
SarahHOST
Um- Oftentimes, uh, Chance Beebe, the- when he was a ranger, he would go meet the Great Northern Railway buses as they arrived at the St. Mary Chalets.
JoshHOST
Hmm.
SarahHOST
So, you know, as a ranger back then, you wore many hats.
DJ PetrovskiHOST
Vincent Astor, now deceased, was a member of forty-one private clubs to give an idea of how much power just one of the many Astor men wields.
DJ PetrovskiHOST
Some of the businesses Vincent was involved include: Director, American Express Company; dir., Atlantic Fruit and Sugar Company; dir., Chase Manhattan Bank, of the Rockefellers; dir., City and Suburban Homes Company; dir., Classical Cinematograph Corporation; dir., Cuban Dominican Sugar Company; dir., Great Northern Railroad; dir., Il Central Railroad; dir., Inter.
DJ PetrovskiHOST
Mercantile Marine Company; dir., National Park Bank of New York; dir., New York County Trust Company; dir., Weekly Publications Incorporated; dir., Western Union Telegraph; trustee, New York Zoological Soc; advisor to Bankers Trust of N.A.; member, American Museum of Nat.
DJ PetrovskiHOST
History; member, Nat'l Inst.
SarahHOST
... as you go by.
SarahHOST
That was put up there, it dates back to 1926, and it was one of three locomotive bells placed at the high altitude passes in the park, and it was placed up there by the Great Northern Railway and the Glacier Park Hotel Company.
SarahHOST
And the purpose was to mimic that Swiss tradition of placing bells for trekkers, you know, announce their safe arrival, and also to let people know in the valley, "We're coming." Um, but it, unfortunately it was removed in 1943 during World War II, and that was for that, you know, the scrap metal drive.
JoshHOST
drive.Yeah, that is interesting, and you can still see remnants of it.
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