The United Nations has declared 2025 an “International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.” The USGS maintains the longest record of glacial mass balance in North America with monitoring that began at South Cascade Glacier in Washington during the International Geophysical Year of 1959. In 1967, Wolverine and Gulkana Glaciers in Alaska were added to the program. Sperry Glacier in Montana and Lemon Creek Glacier in Southeast Alaska were added more recently. In the early years of the program, direct measurements of glacier mass balance were the only feasible way to track glacier change. In the modern era, we can track glacier change with remote sensing and we can run increasingly sophisticated models. Yet direct measurements of glacier mass balance, particularly long, uninterrupted time-series like the USGS Benchmark Glacier Project, have increasingly high scientific value. These are direct measurements of the physical processes that remote sensing and modeling are trying to capture. They continue to yield calibration, validation, and new process insight to every new remote sensing platform and every new model. The value of these long-term data sets continues to rise as new research focuses on glacier’s influence on downstream ecosystems.