See America First En Route to Frisco 



J'ln route to the 1915 convention at San Francisco the 

 special train of the park superintendents and their friends, 

 in its Chicago-'Frisco journey between St. Paul-Minneap- 

 olis and Portland will follow the See America First route 

 of the Great Xorthern Railwav. via Glacier Xational 

 Park. 



Those who will join the party assuredly will see a 

 very great deal of America. Glacier Xational Park, 

 where the special train will tarry for a day, in many 

 respects is the most wonderful of the Xational Play- 

 grounds. In the 2,000 miles, besides, of transcontinental 

 tracks that are included in the Great X'^orthern's lines be- 

 tween the Mississippi Valley and Glacier Park, and be- 

 tween Glacier Park and Puget Sound, along everv mile 

 there is something of America to see. 



At St. Paul and Minneapolis the Great Xorthern's 

 transcontinental track begins — neighbor cities with a 

 combined population of 600,000 spreading over 100 

 square miles on both banks of the Mississippi that are 

 two gateways to the Great Northwest. The Great 

 Northern's stone arch bridge spans the river. 



Across central Minnesota — from southeast to north- 

 west — the Great Northern tracks follow through the Lake 

 Park region, where Minnesota's 10,000 "lakes of sky-blut 

 water" of the bygone Dakotahs are — a bountiful lielt of 

 the "Bread and Butter State." As Minnesota's border is 

 neared, the Red River valley is entered — the bed of 

 glacial Lake .\gassiz of the dim time after the Ice Age, 

 during the past half-century famous for its "No. 1 Hard" 

 wheat. At Moorhead (250 miles out from St. Paul) the 



Red river of the Xorth, flowing to Hudson's Ijay, is 

 bridged. 



Across the golden grain-carpeted prairies of North 

 Dakota — from Fargo and Grand Forks on the Red river 

 — the (ireat Xorthern makes almost straight westward. 

 The richest section of this state that possesses 70,000 

 farms, 100,000 "big red barns" and 2,000 huge grain 

 elevators — and is really one vast farm of 45,000,000 

 acres — is traversed. 



At W'illiston (606 miles out), close to Xorth Dakota's 

 western edge, the Great X'^orthern sets a course along 

 the north bank of the upper Missouri river — the "Big 

 Mudd\" — in the old steamboat days the route of many 

 big 1)oats Jiound from St. Louis to Fort Benton, laden for 

 the military posts and the Helena "diggings." 



At Mondak (629 miles) the Great Xorthern enters 

 Montana. So big a state is Montana — only Texas and 

 California are bigger — that 685 miles of the Great North- 

 ern's rails are necessary to the crossing of it. For the 

 first four hundred miles of this distance the track is laid 

 across the high plains of northern ^lontana ; that as thev 

 outstretch westward gently rise from an altitude of 1,900 

 feet at the Dakota line to one of 3,700 feet at the foot- 

 hills. The ride across Montana's wide plains — where 

 vast sweeps of open country everywhere meet the eye, 

 and the sunshine — saturated, clean air is glorious — is a 

 novel one. These plains — today fast developing into an 

 agricidtural empire — are rich in romance ; much stirring 

 Indian-fighting took place hereabouts in frontier days, 

 and later on this was the land of the Montana long-horn 



STE.AMER "ST. MARY" APPROACHING GOING-TO-THE-SUN CHALETS, ON ST. MARY'S LAKE, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. 



