Visitor center · Glacier National Park
An east-gate stop for ranger advice, exhibits, water, and the shuttle.
Overview
Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Glacier Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Glacier National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Glacier audio tourRecorded for this place
St. Mary Visitor Center“You’re approaching St. Mary Visitor Center, just inside the east entrance. Stop here if you want help choosing walks or understanding what you’ll see along the road.”
Plays as you drive up to St. Mary Visitor Center in the Parkwolf Glacier Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Our first time to glacier and we used the audio portion for Going to the Sun Road. Wonderful information with perfect advice of what to see and do along the road.”
Guide
St. Mary Visitor Center is Glacier’s main orientation stop just inside the park’s east entrance, on Going-to-the-Sun Road. If you’re coming in from St. Mary, stop here before driving farther west: rangers can help with trip planning, and the exhibits and park film give you a quick indoor introduction.
The center has public restrooms, drinking water and bottle filling, a bookstore, exhibits, a theater, maps, park information and a shuttle stop. The short park film is shown through the day. The visitor center is also the eastern end of the Going-to-the-Sun Road shuttle route to Apgar when service is running.
St. Mary was completed in 1967 as one of Glacier’s two Mission 66 visitor centers. The postwar program put prominent, multi-use buildings near park entrances so motorists would stop for orientation and resource information before driving on. St. Mary still serves that purpose at Glacier’s eastern gateway.
The low building has a broad, sweeping roof, a wood frame and walls of concrete with stone embedded in them. Brinkman and Lenon designed the visitor-center complex, built between 1964 and 1968. In 2008, the center and its entrance and checking stations were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an exceptional Mission 66 example.
Take a moment outside to see the whole building. A wide photo that includes the roof’s sweep and the stone walls shows the design better than a close crop of the glass; the roofline was designed to echo the surrounding mountains.
Wildlife
404 sightingsGrizzly BearMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
11 sightingsWolverineMost seen around 8 PMSighting map
1,173 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
1,000 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
395 sightingsMooseMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
506 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 8 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Glacier. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Keep exploring
EasyBeaver Pond Loop Trail3.3 mi · 2 hr · 0.6 mi awayA gentle loop past a beaver pond and the 1913 Ranger Station
ChallengingRed Eagle Lake Trail16.2 mi · 8.5 hr · 0.6 mi awayA long walk from St. Mary meadows to Red Eagle Lake.
ChallengingSouth Shore St. Mary Lake Trail16.4 mi · 9.5 hr · 0.7 mi awayMeadows, lakeshore forest, and two waterfalls on a long traverse
ChallengingDivide Creek Trail2.5 mi · 2.5 hr · 2.8 mi awayA hard-to-find old road through burned forest to Divide Creek.
Entrance station · At the trailheadSt. Mary Entrance StationGet your park pass sorted before you head west.
Campground · 0.3 mi awaySt. Mary CampgroundAn open hillside camp with wide St. Mary Lake views.
Sight · 0.7 mi awayHistoric 1913 Ranger StationA 1913 cabin with a ranger story, beside two trailheads.
Sight · 1.7 mi awayTwo Dog FlatsA prairie-edge pause for early wildlife watching and wide views.Parkwolf’s Glacier ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
