View-Master's Pictures of Glacier National Park
This is going to be a rambling set of insights so feel free just to jump to any section that strikes your fancy.
If you would rather just see all 117 pictures from all of the 13 View-Master reels that exist just click the link below. (Note: View-Master is pretty bad with duplicates so this set includes the 21 duplicate photos leaving only 70 unique pictures.)
How did this start?
I mean, I didn't wake up on Tuesday and go "I think I need to purchase every View-Master Image of Glacier National Park in existence".
Back when I did my page on comparing my photos of Glacier National Park and the ones taken by View-Master I had the thought to buy some replacement slides because the ones I had were not in the best condition. After a quick search on Amazon I found an advertisement for "Glacier National Park View-Master 3 Reels". Great and at only $18 a steal. At least I thought so until I got the reels and discovered that these were not the photos I was looking for.
View-Master Photos of Glacier National Park
The View-Master was released in 1939 and there are now thousands of different reels. No definitive list exists but I found one list with over 7,000 titles so let's just say "a bunch".
Glacier has been a very popular subject for View-Master since the beginning and they have 13 reels of pictures. With each release they re-use some old photos and take some new photos to mix in. There is no index of what photos are available or what year any photo was taken. There is an excellent source of information at a site called 3dstereo.com with the largest index of reels I could find. What it does not have is an index of pictures and that leads to "When is a 46 not a 46?".
All 13 Reels
- 46, 47, 48 (Hand Lettered and Type Faced Lettering without any copyright)
- SP49
- 46, 47, 48 (Type Faced Lettering with copyright 1948)
- A2961, A2962, A2963
- 35047-9019, 35047-9029, 35047-9039
When is a 46 not a 46?
As I mentioned while 3dstero.com is the best index I could find online, what it does not have is an index of images and really this should not be an issue. I mean if the reel is label #46, then all of the #46 reels should have the same images right? Obviously you have never worked for View-Master.
When trying to get my list of the available reels I used EBay extensively. It's an amazing reference for this with thousands of reels for sale and the occasional picture that is detailed enough that you can even see what pictures are on the reel. This was all going well until I thought I had mistyped the titles for the #46 reel. Was the first image of "Little Chief Mountain" or "Lake Sherburne". The answer is both.
My best guess is that when the #46, #47, and #48 reels were reprinted in 1948 to include the copyright, they also for some unknown reason swapped out some but not all of the images for different images. Why these and not others? Why keep the reel numbers the same? I guess I'll never know. What is particularly annoying, is that if they did this once, they might have done this before or again. To find out I would have to check the releases of every single reel and that is a bit much for even me.
An interesting note about copyrights. On the US government it states that for a "work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication" So I assume this means the images on the original reels from 1939 will expire in 2034.
| Description | Year |
|---|---|
| hand-lettered (gold foil) | 1939-1940 |
| hand-lettered (blue ring) | 1940-1941 |
| hand-lettered (buff) | 1941-1944 |
| hand-lettered (white) | 1944-1946 |
| typeset, w/o copyright | 1946-1948 |
| typeset copyright 1948 | 1948 |
Photo Dating
One of the more interesting things I noticed when comparing theses reels was the photo of the logan pass visitors center, or lack thereof. On the reels I had as a kid (The A296 series) there is a photo titled Summit Logan Pass" with no visitors center. It seems the center was completed in 1966 before theses reels were printed. There is no printing date for the A296 Reels so I wondered if it was possible to date the printing using clues from any of the images.
The "Summit Logan Pass" photo had the answer. I found that work on the new visitors center was started in July of 1963 giving me an "newest" date, but I was stumped for an oldest estimate. The breakthrough was with a FB post I made asking for ideas on car ages and my friend Julie saw what looks like an Edsel car in the photo. Since the Edsel was only made from 1958-1960 I would say we have a good range of 1958-1963. Internet for the win!
Pre 1938 |
Post 1938 |
A296 |
Mystery Chalet
While trying to determine how many duplicate images there were I realized that some of the images were not duplicates but rather "twins" or images taken from nearly the identical spots. After grouping the similar photos I noticed this really odd pair from the Pre 1948 and post 1948 set. There seems to be a missing building. And off down the rabbit hole we go again.
Welcome to the "St. Mary Chalets" also known as the "Going-to-the-Sun Chalets". Constructed in 1912 and demolished in 1943. The National Park website has some great information about it. I ended up finding a total of 6 chalets of which 3 survive.
As for my personal contribution to the web I noticed that while searching for pictures of the chalet, there was not a single color photo online. So here you go, not only in color but 3D!
St. Mary Chalets (Going to the Sun Chalets) from the National Park Website
National Park Service
| Name | Years |
|---|---|
| Cut Bank Chalet | 1911-1949 |
| St. Mary Chalets (Going to the Sun Chalets) | 1912-1943 |
| Gunsight Chalet | 1911-1916 |
| Two Medicine Chalet | 1912-1956* (Building was converted to a general store) |
| Granite Park Chalet | 1911 - Currently Open |
| Sperry Chalets | 1913 - Currently Open (rebuilt after the fire of 2017) |
Pre 1938 |
Pre 1938 |
Post 1938 |
From a postcard found on EBay |
From the National Park Service |
Twins
It seems there are a couple of "required" spots to get pictures from. Here are some of my favorite "twins".
Going to the Sun Mountain
I'm pretty sure that both of these photo were taken before the Going to the Sun Road was complete in 1933 which make this duplicate even more interesting as it's just a random spot on a hiking trail.
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The Many Glacier Hotel
Ok, lets get a small and not very detailed picture of the hotel. Ok, let's take a similar picture but with the hotel even smaller. Nope, nope, let's try with the hotel larger but blurry, yea, that's better.
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Logan Pass
We should take a picture somewhere here. I just not sure where somewhere is.
Paving
Hey wait, you mean the road wasn't paved when it was built? Nope.
"Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed on July 15, 1933. In 1938, portions of the road were paved with asphalt. Following an interruption in paving due to World War II, by the end of 1952, the road was paved in its entirety." - NPS
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Oct 2021