end of each canyon in the range. These processes also gave the Mission Mountains their distinct shapes. The many three-sided peaks, called horns or pyramidal peaks, and the knife-like ridges of the southern half of the range are results of the heavy mountain glaciation. The northern half of the range was largely rolled over by the Flathead Lobe, which was much like a huge moving ice sheet. This led to the shorter, more rounded features of the northern half of the range. The Pleistocene was a time of dramatic and quick sculpting in the Mission Mountains. And though that epoch has ended, the erosion continues. Rain, snow, ice, wind, and other forces continue to work at the alpine landscape of the Missions. Human History Recorded human contact with the Mission Mountains began with the native peoples thousands of years ago and runs up to the present. The Salish and Kootenai people have traditionally used the mountains as a place for fishing, hunting, berry-picking, and for performing sacred ceremonies. The first major outside attention to the Mission Mountains came in the 1920s. Forest service employee Theodore Shoemaker led several parties of visitors thorough the range between 1922 and 1924, one of which included members of the Great Pacific Railway Company, which owned a great deal of land in the range. On a 1923 trip Shoemaker triangulated the locations of several peaks, which led to the first map of the high country. In the 1930s, the Mission Mountains were considered for inclusion in a proposed national park in the area south of Glacier National Park. Ronan Commercial Club president J. L. Jones wrote to the National Park Service director in support of the idea, "We suggest, Mr. Albright, that you add to your already splendid services the inclusion of the Mission Range of mountains... Truly we possess here not the 'garden of Eden,' but that being lost only in myth and tradition we have a most fitting substitute 'The Garden of the Rockies.'" The park service sent a team to study the region during the summer of 1937, but in the end they rejected the proposal, writing, "the Flathead would be of special value in the National Park system if this section were not already fairly well represented by Glacier Park." The first major protective action for the Mission Range came on October 21, 1931 when 67,000 acres of land along the