Glacier Memories: Trip was done in usual style

Ann Murphy was just short of 30 years old in the late 1940s when she rounded up the courage to join a friend on a train tour north from San Francisco to visit Glacier National Park.

While she didn’t exactly know what to expect, she had no doubts about what to wear.

“When you traveled then, whether it was on the city street car or on the train, it was always white-glove stuff,” said Murphy, 92, who still makes her home in San Francisco. Her son, Bob, lives in Spokane.

“The possibility that wearing nice clothes might not be particularly practical in Glacier Park never occurred to us,” she said in a telephone interview

“Not necessarily everyone went that way, but to this day, whether I’m going to visit family in Alaska or wherever, I dress that way.”

Murphy recalls going on Glacier Park bus tours and returning each evening to eat fine food in park hotels “that looked like old-time castles.”

“I didn’t see any need for boots or pants,” she said.