Glacier Park's first artist-in-residence?

[rhughes]

While doing some online research for my book I came across James Madison Alden who appears to have been Glacier's first artist-in-residence, so to speak.

In the 1860's a survey was done between Washington State and the Continental Divide to determine the US - Canada border. James Alden accompanied this survey and did a series of over 60 watercolor paintings of the scenes along the way. About a dozen of these are of the Glacier area, from the North Fork to the divide.

These are quite stunning and they can be viewed online through at the National Archives site (http://arcweb.archives.gov). You can do a search for James Alden and find the images, or you can PM me and I'll provide more detailed information.

You can spend quite a lot of time viewing these scenes and trying to figure out where they are exactly. It is helpful to have a copy of Jack Holterman's Place Names of Glacier/Waterton National Parks handy as many of the place name used by Alden are pre-dead-white-men-name times. If you are interested in learning more about the boundary survey you can view Through the Years in Glacier National Park online. Go to nps.gov/history/history and look at Park Histories.

The description of the image below is "View from mounument at Summit looking E. across Waterton or Chief Mountain Lake along 49th parallel. Yellow peak on left bears N."