[7] The road is approximately 50 miles (80 km) long and spans the width of the park between the east and west entrance stations.

As the project proceeded, Goodwin lost influence with National Park Service director Stephen Mather, who favored landscape architect Thomas Chalmers Vint's alternative routing of the upper portion of the road along the Garden Wall escarpment.

Vehicles over 10 feet (3.0 m) in height may not have sufficient clearance due to rock overhangs when driving west between Logan Pass and the hairpin turn called the Loop.

On the east side of the Continental Divide, there are few guardrails due to heavy snows and the resultant late-winter avalanches that have destroyed protective barriers.

[4] A restoration project by the National Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration has been repairing road damage from many avalanches and rock slides over the years.

[11] The repairs, which started in the 1980s and continue to the present day when weather permits, include fixing retaining walls, replacing the original pavement with reinforced concrete, and work on tunnels, bridges, culverts and overlooks.

[13] Thirty-three of the original buses were rebuilt with flexible-fuel engines which operate mainly on propane but can use gasoline, and with automatic transmissions, making the Jammer name archaic.

[16]Going-to-the-Sun Road is shown in the opening credits of the 1980 film The Shining, as aerial flybys of Wild Goose Island and the protagonist's car traveling along the north shore of Saint Mary Lake, through the East Side tunnel and onward, going to a mountain resort hotel for his job interview as a winter caretaker.

[17][better source needed] The road is also featured at night at the climax of the sequel adaptation, Doctor Sleep, when Danny Torrance returns to the Overlook Hotel with Abra to confront the antagonist Rose The Hat.