Even before Norton Pearl made his snowshoe circuits of Glacier National Park, Frank Liebig was there. They must have known each other since Liebig worked for the Forest Service for 33 consecutive years, from 1902 until 1935, when he retired.

From 1902 until 1910, when Glacier Park was established, Liebig’s “district” was the area which became Glacier Park, and his home at the north end of Lake McDonald was reached by a trappers trail that extended to the Canadian Border.

In 1901, an oil seep was discovered at the head of Kintla Lake, and a company of eight wealthy Butte, Montana men formed a company and filed on most of the land on the north side of Kintla Lake in order to drill for oil.

They built the first wagon road up the North Fork in order to get their machinery to the site. Oil was never found, but the stream boiler from that effort still lies in the water at the head of Kintla Lake.

Improving the trail to a muddy wagon road did bring more people to the mostly uninhabited North Fork. It became the route north for the first homesteaders. It also became the route south from Canada for bands of Cree Indians hunting moose and deer. Liebig chased them north at least twice.

One can only imagine the risk of a lone Forest Service ranger facing a band of 20-40 Cree Indians accompanied by up to 40 dogs that they used for hunting. Liebig’s journal recorded the events matter-of-factly in short direct sentences.

Basically, he stood in the trail with his rifle or walked into their camp and told them they had to go north and return to Canada. They, in turn, pretended not to understand English, but in the end, each time, they packed up and returned north.

Liebig spent most of his time patrolling his vast 2 million acre Forest Reserve. His description of the area before the big fires of 1910 is interesting:

“All heavy timber form Belton to Lake McDonald; road almost impossible on account of mud.”

“The timber in those days was sure marvelous. Very few fire scars — just little patches form 1-20 acres, until 1910 when we had the real big fires and had more large fires ever since.”

“In those days, one man patrolled from Belton up to Canada and then east to Waterton Lake, stayed with the Mounties in Pinkerton Barracks — thence to Babb — and either home over Swiftcurrent Pass or Gunsight Pass to Lake McDonald. Camp wherever night overtook me. No hotels, no telephones them days. Bears galore!”

“Bear meat was my main diet, as I had to declare war on these animals as they broke into camps very often and destroyed my grub. Game was sure plentiful — dozens of deer seen every day, plenty of moose and sheep and goats were seen in big herds along the Continental Divide.”

What a life. What do you think?