page_title: Glacier, British Columbia
section_title: Glacier House
hierarchical_section_title: Glacier, British Columbia / Initial settlement / Glacier House
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture I took while staying at the Wheeler Hut on a winter trip.
context_page_description: Glacier, which once comprised small communities, is on the western approach to Rogers Pass in southeastern British Columbia. The name derives from the Great Glacier, which in the 1880s was just over a mile from the original train station.
context_section_description: To avoid hauling additional weight up the significant gradient, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) parked a dining car at this location for a passenger train meal stop. Already ruled out were the summit, with its avalanche paths, and the steep river gorges of the eastern slope, which provided little space to develop facilities. This alpine meadow was an ideal setting for the Selkirk dining station. In 1885, Thomas Charles Sorby, future architect of the first CP Hotel Vancouver, designed a chalet for this site. The large dining room opened in November or December 1886, allowing the dining car to return to regular service.  
  The 15-bedroom accommodation was ready for guests in January 1887, but staff occupied half these rooms. A sleeping car was soon parked permanently to accommodate overflows. A small two-storey station served the stop. Bruce Price's 1889 design for a 22-room addition, was revised as the 32-room annex that opened in 1892. Around 1898, the dining room was enlarged, and CP constructed a two-storey building with five bedrooms upstairs and a billiard room downstairs. The 54-room wing, with elevator, and new reception area, opened in 1904. About this time, the station name changed to Glacier. Few guests stayed through the winter. Francis Rattenbury designed a substantial hotel on the site, but construction never proceeded beyond the footings. 
  The initial manager struggled to handle the limited time allotted for the dining stop. Acknowledging the whole facility required professional management, CP signed a lease agreement with Harry A. Perley in 1887 to run the enterprise, which appears to have been operating at a loss. Perley received all revenue, without contributing to the cost of capital improvements. After alleging for years that Perley's other hotel interests had prevented sufficient attention being paid to the Glacier operation, Mr. Sheffield, CP manager of hotels, succeeded in Perley's ousting.
  Miss A.E. Mollison, formerly at the CP Mount Stephen House, Field, was manager March 1897–December 1899. Succeeding her from Field was Miss Julia Mary Young, who stayed until 1920. Few details survive of the final managers.
  Albert W. Sharp was the inaugural postmaster, serving only four months in 1899.
  The observation tower was likely built in 1890, but a telescope was not added until 1898 to view mountaineers climbing the glacier and peaks. The tower was demolished around 1910. Other structures included a baggage room, ice house, laundry houses, bowling alley, employee and guide quarters, stables, and powerhouse. Electric lighting came around the turn of the century. Manager Young converted the bowling alley into a curio store. A Union Bank branch existed from 1912, primarily for the tunnel construction workers.
  After 1909, when dining car use extended to the mountains, the Glacier House catering staff worked only the summers.  George Vaux Sr., with children Mary, George Jr. and William Jr. first came in 1887, and regularly revisited. The children became noted for their photography and documentation of the area and glacier. It is unclear whether a doctor permanently staffed the small hospital. Peter Sarbach, who came in 1897, was the first professional mountain guide. Proximity to the glacier resulted in the house having more Swiss guides than other mountain hotels. CP maintained hiking trails south of the railway track until 1926, while the Department of the Interior maintained those to the north. Tourists would also visit the Nakimu Caves.	
  Closed to the public in the fall of 1925, and guides the following year, the rationale is confusing. Like Lake Louise, the ascent from the new station was onerous for horse-drawn vehicles. However, Lake Louise resolved this challenge with a gasoline-powered tramway (1912-1930). Despite the track infrastructure being in place, CP chose not to replicate this solution at Glacier. The more popular Banff and Lake Louise destinations were the CP priorities, and destructive fires at those hotels, in 1924 and 1926 respectively, drained investment capital. However, CP prepared grandiose
caption: Arthur O Wheeler hut, 2007.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A630", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:11 17:19:38", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1138", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5304", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:01:12 08:14:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:01:12 08:14:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "73/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "3264", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2448", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "988", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1632000/143", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1224000/107", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}