There are no glaciers in Glacier. In fact, you can’t even see any ice sheets from the center of town, though some nearby viewpoints afford a look at the snowy top of Mount Baker, about 10 miles to the southeast. The North Fork of the Nooksack River tumbles through the hamlet—population 188—and surrounding second-growth forest, and some of that water is certainly melted ice. But the town of Glacier has one thing going for it that few actual glaciers do: it’s growing.

As Lilliputian as it may be, Glacier has held an outsize place in northern Washington since it was founded in the early twentieth century. Initially, mining drove settlement along the Nooksack, with dance halls and saloons and whole villages erupting in places that have since disappeared, and where you would find nothing but forest today. But for the past few decades, what brought people to town were not visions of gold but dreams of powder; the highway dead-ends at Mount Baker Ski Area (see page 76) about 20 miles east, a place where furious, wet storms off the Pacific dump record levels of snow. Little Glacier has grown and contracted with tourism, recently feeling the sting of pandemic interruptions. But this winter skiers will see two new restaurants in town—and maybe more.

Well, sort of new. When Knut Christiansen and business partner Joelle Adams—both longtime locals—first walked into historic Graham’s Restaurant, they were faced with an aging, hundred-year-old building where eateries have risen and faded several times since the original 1970s iteration. The Graham family still owned the property, and a small grocery store still operated out of half of the structure. The pair was faced with the prospect of updating it without losing Glacier’s longtime heart.

“This is where our friends gather, where you see people in your community,” says Christiansen. Adams’s husband co-owns the ski shop across the street, where a long fence made of old skis gives the town its signature look, but its physical doors open only half of the year. Wake N’ Bakery, a block off the main road, dishes fresh baked goods and breakfast burritos, but shutters before dinner. Graham’s latest three-year closure left a hole in the middle of town. “This is a living thing, this is not just a history piece,” Christiansen says.

That meant polishing the vintage bar top, one whose history outdoes even the building—rumors suggest it may have traveled around South America’s Cape Horn by ship in the 1800s, then earned scratches from gold miners who slammed their guns on the bar. Christiansen and Adams mounted photos of the famous actors who’d hung out in town, like Clark Gable, who filmed Call of the Wild nearby, and Robert De Niro from production of The Deer Hunter. Model airplanes salute the Graham family, who made them, and a snowboard salutes Mount Baker. Christiansen calls it “a museum of oddities.”

The food embraces the oddball, too, with dishes like “A Dinosaur Walks into a Bar” (a bratwurst done Seattle-style with cream cheese and sauerkraut) and “The Log Lady” (a side of fries). Usual post-ski favorites like burgers and a flat iron steak hold down the menu, but so do chicken katsu and venison chili. Artists both, Adams and Christiansen took out the restaurant’s pool table and added a stage for live music. “This is our community center,” he says.

Across the street, a truly new venture rises in one of town’s few other commercial spaces. Like Graham’s, Gunners Tex Mex BBQ  has local roots; co-owner Scott Arnason was born in Nooksack down the road, and lately has grown tired of having to drive west toward Bellingham just to get food.

Inside the restaurant, the walls are mostly bare, a calm alternative to Graham’s maximalist history. In the airy space with an outdoor patio—an Italian joint for years, then briefly an eclectic eatery called Heliotrope—Gunners serves pulled pork and ribs, a sizable double-decker smash burger and several kinds of tacos. Despite the Tex Mex in the name, there’s plenty of classic Southern barbecue, like moist brisket and a pile of burnt ends with equal parts crisp and rich flavor.

For all the longtime locals reactivating old spaces in Glacier, the endeavor that has attracted the most attention is the opposite. So far it exists mostly on the internet: Oculis Lodge, a project launched on crowdfunding site Indiegogo in 2022, earned $1.2 million from users who put in money for first crack at reservations, making it the most funded lodging campaign in Indiegogo history. Renderings show a field of white residential domes tucked into snowy forest, 15-foot skylights open to the stars, with private saunas and jetted tubs. National magazines like Outside and Travel and Leisure picked it up, reprinting the computer-made images of Oculis—even as little existed in actual Glacier.

In March the Seattle Times published a story about the red tape hotelier Youri Benoiston faced in building on the 2.16-acre plot of land he’d purchased in Glacier; zoning was for a single-family residence, said a county representative, despite those renderings of dozens of structures. On Indiegogo, Benoiston posts updates on the construction of the singular (so far) dome, including the delivery of the signature skylight in August, and claims that future phases will mean more domes being built. (Benoiston did not reply to requests for comment.) 

Around town, bring up the Oculis project and most people shrug. “From moment
one, everyone was wary of it,” says Arnason. Locals mostly express skepticism. As of November, the shape of the first dome is evident in the treed plot of land, but a sprawling resort seems far-off.

In funky, noncorporate Glacier, modernity feels optional. Outside Graham’s, a pay phone still stands on the long front porch, plastered with stickers for snowboard companies. In summer, an ice cream shop operates as cash only, with a tip jar labeled “Help send my hampster [sic] to beauty school.” There are few pockets of cell service surrounding the town, and most Wi-Fi is slow.

But Glacier is busier than ever, its summer hiking and mountain biking traffic now as steady as the winter skiers. The snowy months will always be the calling card for the town with the icy name. “We still live and die by the snow,” Gunners co-owner Arnason notes. There’s something in the air, he adds, something that feels like rebirth: “It just feels more like Glacier of old, the prime,” he says, “when everything was really going off.”