Classics and archives

Abstract

In 1925, then-Captain AW Stevens of the US Army Air Corps took low-angle, oblique aerial photographs of the spectacular landscape of Glacier National Park, Montana (USA). Two of those photographs, of astonishing clarity, were used in a US Geological Survey Professional Paper published in 1959, but were subsequently assigned to the US National Archives and never utilized again. This paper advocates the usefulness of Stevens’ photographs for documenting landscape change from the early 20th century to the present. Stevens’ photographs illustrate the “state” of numerous Park glaciers in 1925, and are the first known aerial photographs of the Park glaciers. These photographs can be used in comparison to modern photographs to illustrate the extent of glacial recession that has occurred in the Park since 1925.