While in the Glacier Park Lodge I bought a copy of "Travels in Alaska" by John Muir. He was working on the book in 1914 when he died of pneumonia, and it chronicles his trips to SE Alaska in 1879, 1880, and 1890. He went to many of the same places that Mary Alice and I did, and comparing his experiences with ours was interesting. In 1879-80 the place was a howling wilderness and he is travelling mostly in indian canoes, mapping and naming places and glaciers. In 1890, 10 or 11 years later, he travels on a tourist steamship to Glacier Bay, carrying 180 passengers.. If I might quote Scott Miller "It didn't take too long..."'

June 18, 1890 "We arrived at Wrangel in the rain at 10:30 A.M. There was a grand rush on shore to buy curosities and see totem poles. The shops were jammed and mobbed, high prices paid for shabby stuff manufactured expressly for tourist trade. Silver braclets hammed out of dollars and half dollars by Indian smiths are the most popular articles, then baskets, yellow cedar toy canoes, paddles, etc. Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook-maker, however ignorant."

June 21 1890" "We arrived at Douglas Island (part of Juneau now) .... A dance-house in which Indians are supposed to show native dances of all sorts is perhaps the best patronized of all the places of amusement."

July 1, 1890 "As I set out to climb the second mountain, three thousand feet high, on the east side of the glacier, i met many tourists returning from a walk on the smooth east margin of the glacier and had to answer many questions...."

July 7, 1890. "I am writing letters in anticipation of the next steamer, the Queen. She arrived about 2:30 P.M. with two hundred and thirty tourists. What a show they made with their ribbons and kodaks! All seemed happy and enthuiastic, though it was curious to see how promptly all of them ceased gazing when the dinner-bell rang, and how many turned from the great thundering crystal world of ice to look curiously at the Indians that came alongside to sell trinkets, and how our little camp and kitchen arrangements excited so many to loiter and waste their precious time prying into our poor hut."

More on this later, but I was struck by how rapidly the place went from wilderness to tourist attraction, and by the fact that tourists then are very like tourists now.