Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S U M M E R 2 0 1 6 72 And here he was square in the middle of one of America's greatest landscapes, with jagged spires nestling snowy glaciers that spilled down into valleys blanketed in wildflowers. Yet he was gloomy because he'd just come out of a meeting where he had failed to ward off what he saw as a huge threat to Glacier — indeed, to the still-fragile idea of what a national park should be. And now, overhearing two author- itative Westerners praise the park's wildflowers, he urged them to go back for a last look. e sights wouldn't be the same next year. Just a few months previously, the nation had joined the monu- mental World War, and patriotism burned. Albright's boss, Inte- rior Secretary Franklin K. Lane, sought to put his whole depart- ment on a war footing. One of the most pressing issues, Lane and others believed, was the food supply. President Woodrow Wilson had demonstrated the need to increase food production by letting sheep graze on the White House lawn. Could Interior Depart- ment resources also help? Enter the Penwell Sheep Company. Lewis Penwell, an attorney in Helena, Montana, was also an investor in real estate, newspa- pers, and sheep. At one time Penwell owned one of the largest sheep herds in the world, which he managed under an unusual economic model: he would place his sheep with small ranchers in exchange for a portion of the profits. Penwell saw himself as overcoming limitations in capital markets that prevented such small ranchers from amassing the capital to buy their own herds; meanwhile, Penwell got to run larger herds than the land he owned could otherwise support. A political operator, Penwell was also a close friend of Sena- tor omas J. Walsh (D-Mont.). Walsh and Albright were bitter enemies. "I thoroughly detested Walsh," Albright later wrote, cit- ing him as "ruthless, inconsiderate… [and] belligerent toward our conservation goals." Furthermore, Albright believed that criticism from Walsh had helped send Mather (who today would likely be diagnosed as bipolar) to a sanitarium, resulting in Albright's "act- ing" directorship. With Walsh's vocal aid, Penwell proposed to the Interior Department that he could help the war effort by grazing his sheep in Glacier. Lane agreed. But Albright hated the idea. He had helped write the law establishing the Park Service, with its eloquent language about keeping parks "un- impaired for the enjoyment of future generations." Elsewhere, overgrazing had decimated grasslands, failing to preserve the wildflowers for future generations. So what did patriotism mean? To Albright, it meant protecting what was special about America, including its natural wonders such as the pristine quality of these valleys. Given these priorities, Albright had unsuccessfully argued, parks should not be used for wartime food production unless the war took an improbably disastrous turn. Albright fought these battles across the nation. In Yosemite, he raised an uproar over a proposal to feed 50,000 sheep in the park, in part by referring to the sheep using John Muir's phrase "hooved locusts." At Mount Rainier, he probably coordinated with the Washington Moun- taineers Club, which offered to give over their Puget Sound lawns and golf courses to keep sheep out of the park. And he had come to Glacier to make the personal appeal to the leaders of Penwell's firm. But "I had found those fellows arrogant and adamant," he wrote in a memoir. en, brooding at the hotel in East Glacier, he overheard the conversation about wildflowers. "It won't look like this after the sheep are allowed to eat it all up for a sack of silver," Albright told the men. Intrigued, they encouraged him to explain. One of them, it turned out, was Walter G. Hansen, owner of a meat-packing facil- ity in Butte, Montana. is was not just a local slaughterhouse: it was a four-story, $500,000 plant that by 1929 would employ 350 people—and it likely focused on hogs and cattle rather than sheep. Furthermore, Hansen and Albright both shared the view, common in that day, that cattle were gentler grazers than sheep. So Hansen proposed that instead of leasing the entire park to Penwell for sheep, Albright lease a slice of it to Hansen for cows. It would be a small herd of cows on some isolated chunk of land, Hansen proposed. But PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON HAD DEMONSTRATED THE NEED TO INCREASE FOOD PRODUCTION (DURING WORLD WAR I) BY LETTING SHEEP GRAZE ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN. COULDN'T GLACIER PARK DO LIKEWISE? Hidden Lake Nature Trail in Glacier National Park Glacier Lodge in the 1920s F I N D Y OU R A D V E N T U R E • SP I R I T A N D I N S P I R A T I O N • GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

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