At the Foot of the Belton Hills - National Park Service

Figure 5. Map of
headquarters area
showing fi rst-phase
development,
1917–1941.
8 Cultural Landscape History
First Development Phase, 1917–1941
The fi rst phase of headquarters-area development
(Figure 5) coincided with the 1916 birth
of the National Park Service. As the new agency
proceeded with site planning and building
construction, it did so with the goal of bringing
credit to the park, the government, and
the agency itself. The headquarters site was
deliberately located in a conspicuous place
right at the park boundary. Ideally, park visitors
would observe that the park was under
eff ective management at the same time that
they passed through the new “registration station.”
It is worth noting that there was ample
precedent for situating a park headquarters
on the main entrance road: the headquarters
at both Mammoth Hot Springs, in Yellowstone
National Park, and at Longmire, in
Mount Rainier National Park, were similarly
located (although they were a few miles inside
the park boundary). At Glacier, the fi rst task
was to clean up the Snyder property, which
Supervisor George E. Goodwin described in
June 1917 as being “in a horribly fi lthy condition.”
Snyder’s former hotel and saloon were
occupied at this time by a logging contractor,
and the buildings were not of an appearance
to refl ect well on the government (Goodwin
1917).
While the Snyder property was converted
into temporary administrative offi ces, four
employee cottages (Buildings 1–4; Figure 6)
were partially constructed in the fall of 1917;
the interiors were completed in the following
year. The building plans were perhaps the fi rst
residential designs produced by the fl edgling
agency and exhibited Craftsman Style architecture
(Figure 7).
Each cottage contained a living room, bedroom,
kitchen, and bathroom on the main
fl oor and two small bedrooms on the second
fl oor. While the plans consisted of a single
fl oor plan, changes in roof direction and