ROUTE OF THE EMPIRE BUILDER
Even if the Empire Builder were an ordinary train-which it is not-the traveler would be thrilled by the route it follows.
Westbound, from Chicago, this extraordinary train glides quietly across northern Illinois while you sleep, and along the Wisconsin shore of the Mississippi River to an early morning arrival in those twin strongholds of the old Northwest - St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Then westward, almost as the crow flies, it swings across Minnesota, "Land of Ten Thousand Lakes," and pauses briefly at Fargo, North Dakota. Here one sees that historic waterway, the Red River of the North, on which James J. Hill, the pioneer "Empire Builder" transported men and merchandise in his youth and dreamed of a railroad to bring these rich prairie lands into a close bond with the cities of the east.
From Fargo across North Dakota and Montana to Glacier Park, The Empire Builder gives the traveler a glimpse of that picturesque "out west" which Theodore Roosevelt loved-and which the Indian tribes and buffalo herds stubbornly relinquished not so long ago. All this time your Empire Builder has been climbing - but so gradually, so imperceptibly - that you are amazed to find yourself at Glacier Park station, at the very threshold of Glacier National Park and the Rocky Mountains. Here the Rockies were pushed up from the bottom of an ancient ocean eons ago, and they tower overhead, a massive barrier.
Glacier Park is where you take the famous Logan Pass Detour, a twenty-four hour trip compassing some of the grandest mountain scenery on the western continent. The trip is by automobile on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway, You reach Going-to-the-Sun Chalets for a night of rest, continuing the auto trip next morning and catching the Empire Builder again westbound from Belton. (Eastbound passengers start the Logan Pass Detour at Belton, resuming the train journey at Glacier Park Station.) The Logan Pass Detour and other trips in this great National playground may be taken during the Park Season-June 15th to September 15th.
The Empire Builder makes its way through this rugged disarray of nature-following the southern boundary of Glacier National Park for sixty breath-taking miles and the tumbling middle fork of the Flathead River from its source to Columbia Falls. The Continental Divide is crossed through Marias Pass.
This is the lowest of all transcontinental passes in the Northwest United States. Lewis and Clark heard of it but could not find it.
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