Xanterra is a new player on the Glacier National Park scene, but it has a broad presence and history across the country.

Bob Yow, Xanterra’s vice president of business development, was at Flathead Valley Community College Friday to give a taste of what the company is all about at an economic forum sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association.

 Yow did not offer information about plans for Glacier Park, where the company will become the main concessions contractor starting in January under a 16-year contract. The park’s main concessions operations have long been managed by Glacier Park Inc.

“We’re still assessing what we need to get up and running,” he said, later adding that the company intends “to hire as many people who have been in the park as possible.”

Xanterra has a history that stretches back to 1878, when a businessman named Fred Harvey started opening a chain of small restaurants along rail lines in the western states. He opened a hotel at the Grand Canyon before it was designated a national park.

The Fred Harvey Co. was bought by another company, Amfac, in the late 1960s. The business was renamed Xanterra Parks and Resorts in 2002. Since then, the company has been on a brisk trajectory of growth, most recently acquiring Windstar Cruises out of Seattle, Kingsville Resort near Williamsburg, Va., Austin-Lehman Adventures out of Billings and winning the Glacier concessions contract.

The company’s nationwide portfolio includes operations in state parks, resorts, tour operations and concessions services in premier national parks including Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Zion, Crater Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park.

The company operates 29 hotels, serves about 2.5 million guests, carries out 700,000 tours and serves about 6.5 million meals every year.

In recent years, Yow said, the company has moved increasingly toward sustainable foods at its facilities, relying more on locally grown food products. At Mt. Rushmore, for example, the company has an organic garden that is used for its restaurants there.

The company also has moved toward alternative energy sources. Its train tour business at Grand Canyon, for instance, has the country’s first locomotive steam engine to be powered by vegetable oil.

“It looks like a steam engine ... but it smells like McDonald’s,” Yow said.

By 2015, the company’s goals include decreasing fossil fuel use by 30 percent, increasing its use of sustainable foods to 50 percent, and decreasing its use of water by 25 percent.

Yow explained that at some of its national parks operations, the sale of water bottles has been eliminated, despite good profits, because the waste stream of plastic bottles was excessive. Bottled water use was replaced by fountains where park visitors can refill reusable bottles for free.

“It’s one of our core values, to be good neighbors,” Yow said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.