Glacier National Park, Montana, and its transmountain road exemplify two critical factors in park management; the role of public demands and agency culture in policymaking, and a self-perpetuating domino effect of development. The National Park Service and the public have developed a culture of beliefs including the public's right to park access, the beneficial effects of the wilderness experience, the need for an educational program in the parks, and the propriety of the automobile to bring about these goals. Following these convictions, the Park Service at Glacier constructed a popular transmountain road which initiated a process of cumulative causation. In this process each infrastructural addition encouraged more use which in turn demanded more infrastructure. The roles of agency culture and cumulative causation have implications for national parks and reserved areas worldwide. (C) 1999 Academic Press.
