Glacier National Park Had About 80 Glaciers in 1850

Glacier National Park was named for its many active glaciers, and it has fewer of them than it did. The U.S. National Park Service states that at the end of the Little Ice Age, around 1850, there were about 80 glaciers in what would eventually become the park. Based on aerial imagery from 2015, there were 26 named glaciers that met the size criteria of 0.1 square kilometers, which is about 25 acres. That was nine fewer than in 1966. The trend is consistent. Between 1966 and 2015, every named glacier in the park got smaller, some by more than 80 percent. The Park Service adds a caution about its own number: of the 26 remaining in 2015, some may now already be too small to be considered glaciers.