The Glory Hole ...

While it's always fun to see the more standard tourist attractions, generally I'm far happier exploring offbeat and under-explored destinations ... places that relatively few people get a chance to see. (Or would want to, for that matter.) Here's a photo I took back in 1992 of one such place -- right at the edge of Glacier National Park.

Sherburne Dam and reservoir were constructed in the late 1910s to store irrigation water for the Milk River Project, which helped irrigate large areas of the central Hi-line country. Nearly the entire reservoir is inside Glacier Park ... it's the one you see driving up the road from Babb to Many Glacier. The dam itself is a big earthen structure, and there's a round concrete tower sitting in the reservoir by it. The tower is part of the dam's spillway ... an unusual design known as a "glory hole." I got to climb down the ladder to the bottom of the glory hole -- well below the waterline -- and this is a shot I took looking back up.