We had gone nearly three miles by 7:35 a.m. That's when we crossed the Belly River on a suspension bridge built like most of the ones we've seen in the park. In a few weeks, a crew will come here and roll up the bridge to store it for the winter.
A ranger station stood a short distance from the other side of the river. It was established here in the earliest days of the national park. One of the first park rangers assigned to work in the Belly River Valley was Joe Cosley. Cosley Lake was named after him.
Cosley seemed like an ideal candidate to be a ranger. He had been a fur trapper, hunter, and guide in Montana since late 1889.
He was hired by Maj. William R. Logan, the first park's superintendent. Logan wanted rangers who knew this rugged territory. One of a ranger's jobs then was to track and arrest poachers. That didn't stop Cosley from poaching wildlife inside the park while on the job.
Cosley was fired when he was caught poaching in 1914 and was ordered to never return to the park. After a stint as a sharpshooter during World War I, he returned to the area and attempted to get hired at the tourist camp on Cosley Lake. Eventually, he returned to his old poaching ways and was arrested for it in 1929.
This time, he managed to skip bail with the help of friends and never returned to the Glacier area.