What a 2015 wildfire uncovered in Glacier National Park: cabins, camps and trash

A forest fire in Glacier National Park that burned for several weeks in 2015 also uncovered a trapper's cabin and road crews' camps that no one knew about. The Reynolds Creek Fire was spotted in the St. Mary Valley on July 21, 2015 and burned on both sides of Going-to-the-Sun Road, which was completed in 1933. Drivers now pass charred snags and see views of St. Mary Lake that the forest once hid, and archeologists found that it hid more personal things too.

The burned forest along Going-to-the-Sun Road. NPS photo.

What the fire exposed

The Park Service says fire is one of the most useful natural disturbances for uncovering historic sites and artifacts, especially in a heavily vegetated place like Glacier. After the fire, two seasonal archeologists explored the burned area. The Baring Creek Cabin, a backcountry patrol cabin still used by park staff, was known to be in the fire's path. New to the park were a historic trapper cabin and construction camps used by crews building the road. To a passer-by the sites look like old trash piles, with broken plates, rusty metal and glass, but the archeologists read them as clues to lives lived decades ago.

Trash from a historic trapper cabin, exposed after the fire burned the vegetation. NPS photo.

A small bottle found at one of the sites. NPS photo.

Reading small things

Context matters most. One archeologist read the logo on a small glass container, which looked like a medicine bottle, as the mark of the Illinois Glass Company, used only from 1915 to 1929, a span that matches the period of road construction. At the remains of the Baring Creek Cabin, melted window glass looks like crystallized rock, and one archeologist guessed the fire burned perhaps as high as 1800 degrees. Fuel cached in the cabin may explain the heat. Fire destroys wooden walls, but leaves stone, metal and some glass. A glass vial near the cabin may be a coffee tube: in Glacier's early days, when visitors toured on horseback, wranglers who guided them handed out the day's coffee ration in such tubes.

Melted window glass from the Baring Creek Cabin. NPS photo.

Leave them where they are

Archeologists, in the Park Service's words, are investigators of life, and trash is evidence of diet and habits. They are working before new growth in the nutrient-rich soil hides the sites. There are no plans to remove the artifacts, which are protected park resources like rocks, bears and buildings, and they help tell the story of the place. A visitor who finds one should not treat it as litter or a souvenir and, if handling it, should put it back as it was found. The photos and quotes come from an exploration of the burn in July 2016.

Sources

• National Park Service, Glacier National Park, "Fire-Fueled Finds", by Stephanie Metzler (https://www.nps.gov/articles/fire-fueled-finds.htm); rewritten in hubnx's own words, with the archeologists it quotes left out.