(now Franz Josef) was very poor. "...when I came through that way, I left the track and took to the bush as being far better walking." By 1903 it had been improved and Dr Ebenezer Teichelmann described it as a good horse track.Douglas had previously surveyed the glacier with A.P. Harper and William Wilson, and had built the first hut there, known as the iron hut, near the 1896 glacier terminal.

In the 1920s Westland was being marketed as a tourist