Snow Rodeo
Photo courtesy: Kyle Brehm
Scenic View
Essex began as a small town on the Great Northern line that bordered Glacier National Park.(from Cheney's Names on the Face of Montana, Mountain Press Publishing Company) Essex is home to the historic Izaak Walton Inn, which once housed winter snow removal crews for the Great Northern Railroad. The spacious lobby is filled with Great Northern Railways memorabilia. This inn is the perfect base for hiking and Glacier National Park in summer, mountain biking and wildlife viewing in autumn, and cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in winter.
Today, Essex is a popular year-round stop for visitors, especially railroad buffs and cross-country skiers. Amtrak continues to make daily stops at this historic depot. It is halfway between East and West Glacier and is situated at the southernmost area of Glacier National Park just twenty-five miles south of the West Glacier entrance to the Park.
Glacier National Park is perhaps the last vestige of pristine wilderness left among the national parks in the continental U.S. Uncrowded and blessed with some of the world's most beautiful scenery, its 1.4 million acres of rugged landscape was sculpted eons ago by slow moving glaciers - 50 of which are active today. Wildlife abounds and the world's most scenic highway. The Going-To-The-Sun Road, cuts a swath through grand vistas in summer and fall.
