Glacier National Park sits in northwestern Montana on the Canada-United States border and covers more than a million acres of mountains, lakes and forest. Its landscape has been shaped by the Lewis Overthrust, a massive movement that pushed ancient rock up and over much younger strata about 170 million years ago, and by glaciers that carved its valleys. Together with Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park, it forms the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, designated in 1932 as the world's first such park. The park has more than 130 named lakes and over 1,000 plant species, and it hosts large mammals including grizzly bears, wolves and mountain goats. Only about 25 active glaciers remained by 2010, down from roughly 150 in the mid-19th century.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.