European Explorers

In 1794, as the mother ship H.M.S. Discovery, Captained by George Vancouver, lay at anchor in Pt. Althorp, a survey crew under the command of Lt. Joseph Whidbey painstakingly maneuvered their longboats through the ice-choked waters of Icy Strait.

The remarkably accurate chart the survey produced shows a mere indentation in the shoreline, "terminated by solid compact mountains of ice," where Glacier Bay is today. The great glacier that filled the Bay was by then in rapid retreat, and was the source of the floating icepack that so hindered Whidbey. Any visitor who came by at the glacial maximum, a few decades earlier, would have found the glacier’s tongue extending out into Icy Strait almost to Lemesurier Island.

| Early Peoples |

| John Muir 1879 |

| Following the Earthquake of 1899 |

| The Scientists |

| Monument Formation 1925 |

| World War II Influences |

| The Monument Develops |

| From Monument to Park 1980 |

| History Time-line |

| Administrative History of Glacier Bay |