Doctor Ector Bossatti

As a part of our preparations for the 100-year anniversary of the Glacier Park Lodge, our marketing team has been spending some time researching exactly what Glacier National Park was like 100 years ago. Recently we received a photo album that has obviously been around for a while. I carefully took the time to view the pages of this album which were marked only with the headings of what year they were taken: 1926, 1927, 1928 and 1929. The photographer appeared to be a gear jammer during those years. The images were epic, and viewing them felt like stepping back in time for the afternoon as I contemplated what it must have been like to live and work inside of Glacier back then. Curiosity got to us and a little researching paid off.  We found that the photographer of the late 1920s album was a soon to be Doctor Ector Bossatti. Apparently, one of his descendants sent us the album with permission to use the images. All we knew of him was what he looked like in his early 20s and that he must have loved Glacier National Park as well as climbing peaks and exploring the backcountry, because there were lots of images from all over the Park.

                As it turns out, those four summers in Glacier National Park took place while Ector was in college at the University of Oregon Medical School. He was born in 1904 and we were saddened to learn that he passed away in 2004 at 100 years of age. However, in those 100 years he spent 62 of them married to his wife Edith; traveled extensively to many places around the world racking up over 100,000 miles of travels; worked 46 years as a doctor where he delivered over 800 babies; served as the Polk County (OR) health officer for 33 years; climbed all of the mountains in Oregon; and visited over 84 countries. Wow! We were able to locate his obituary (http://bit.ly/THxZd0) and the only other photo of Dr. Bossatti  was here: http://bit.ly/Ub4Jz1

                There were around 300 pictures in the album, and we wish we could have posted all of them but due to space limitations we picked a number of our favorites. Dr. Bossatti must have had an extraordinary journey. We hope you enjoyed this little portion of it as much as we did.