This project maps and visualizes the layered histories of media infrastructure development in Glacier National Park, supporting research for my dissertation: “Height of Land: Mediating Topography in the Mountain West.” The project has three phases: first, drawing on historic maps, photographs, and documents compiled during a year of archival research in Montana, I will produce a georeferenced dataset logging the construction (and removal) of trails and roads, telegraph and telephone lines, and fire, radio, and cell towers within the park. Second, I will produce an online interactive map, visualizing the historic ebb and flow of communicative possibility within the park. Third, I will perform topographic viewshed analyses on a select number of locations in GIS software, opening the door to simulate and speculate upon how an infrastructure’s absence or presence within a view—the primary visual currency in national parks—transforms a landscape’s aesthetic value. This project builds directly upon my dissertation, triangulating between infrastructure, topography, and visual economies within western National Parks. In developing an accessible interactive map, it advances public-facing scholarship about human and technological history in National Parks and other protected natural areas. Finally, it demonstrates the potential value of computational viewshed analysis as a method in the digital humanities.

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