Even headquarters was empty at what's widely considered one of the national park system's crown jewels.
Thousands of visitors began streaming out of the park Thursday, along with some National Park Service personnel and other park workers. Scores of residents along the park's western boundary, in the North Fork of the Flathead River drainage, also fled.
``The last trip we had up to the house, we looked back and could feel the blast of the heat on our faces, the sparks rolling through the trees,'' said Jim Clemens, who with more than a dozen neighbors left quickly as the fire burned into the southwestern portion of Glacier.
Much of the western half of the more than 1 million-acre national park was virtually deserted by nightfall.
``It's time to go,'' said park spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt as the fire approached less than two miles from West Glacier. ``We're looking right at this thing from headquarters.''
Evacuees included campers from the Lake McDonald Valley, other visitors, concession employees and nonessential park personnel. The west entrance here was closed, although the first of another 400 firefighters were arriving.
The park's chief concessionaire, Glacier Park Inc., ordered its employees to leave Many Glacier Hotel and Swiftcurrent Inn earlier in the day as a precaution. They were relocating to the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier.
``We're looking at several thousand people,'' as a rough estimate, who had to leave the park, Vanderbilt said.
``I heard someone describe the flow of traffic like rush hour in a large city, going about 20 mph,'' she said.
Going-to-the-Sun Road, the famed alpine highway over the Continental Divide and the only east-west route across the interior of the park, remained closed between Logan Pass and Avalanche because of another fire that blew up Wednesday night and expanded to an estimated 14,000 acres by Thursday. That fire appeared on the verge of crossing the Continental Divide into the eastern portion of the park, officials said.
Another fire of unknown origin erupted in the Flathead National Forest on the west edge of Glacier Wednesday night and moved into the park on a line toward the Apgar Mountains, said fire information officer Lisa Kiebler.
A second major fire in extreme northwest Montana was at 4,500 acres after being pushed by swirling winds across the park's western border. Earlier Thursday, it burned across a fireline and jumped a road along the North Fork as it moved mostly east and south. The fire was about six miles from the Canadian border, threatening numerous cabin sites, with some 400 firefighters assigned, officials said.
In north-central Montana, a 131,000-acre cluster of fires remained the biggest in the state but was nearing containment and officials were preparing to reassign some firefighters and equipment. A small portion of the fire complex burned four old buildings, officials said.
``We turned a corner on this and things are going our way,'' said commander Jim Gray.
In Tonasket, Wash., Gov. Gary Locke marveled at the size of a 58,734-acre wildfire, the largest in the state, that he flew over Thursday.
``It was just an incredible sight,'' Locke said. ``The smoke column was higher than our plane and there were dozens and dozens of fires.''
Three major wildfires burning in Washington have swept across more than 62,000 acres but there have been no serious injuries or homes lost.
One fire near the Canadian border was growing in heavy timber, said Mark Morris, a deputy forest supervisor for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
It is getting so large that it will take a ``season-ending event'' _ typically an early winter snowfall _ to fully put out the flames, Morris said.
Officials from the British Columbia Forest Service met with U.S. officials Thursday since the blaze is just a few miles from the border. It threatens British Columbia's Cathedral Provincial Park and Snowy Provincial Park.
In Idaho, residents mourned the deaths of Jeff Allen, 24, and Shane Heath, 22, who were overrun by flames after they had rappelled to the ground to fight a blaze in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.
Another Idaho blaze grew to 14,000 acres in the Boise National Forest and was about eight miles away from the small town of Atlanta on Thursday. Isolated summer cabins were evacuated, and up to 80 residences are considered threatened.
The National Interagency Fire Center said there were 45 large fires burning in 12 states in the West.
