By SHERRY DEVLIN / of the Missoulian
Editor's note: This year, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency will propose a cleanup plan for the
polluted sediments in Milltown Reservoir. There are,
after 20 years of scrutiny and debate, two
choices: Leave Milltown Dam and its reservoir sediments
in place, managed forevermore. Or remove
the sediments and then the dam. Over the next four days,
the Missoulian will look at Milltown, its dam
and reservoir, and the Superfund cleanup options. We
begin by looking back.
MILLTOWN - The geology department gave them $20 to rent a chain
saw. The graduate students gave
them the benefit of the doubt.
And on a 10-degree day in February 1982, the young
professors - themselves barely out of school -
skied across the ice and onto Milltown Reservoir, looking
to solve a mystery.
A few months earlier, just as hydrogeologist Bill
Woessner was moving into his new office at the
University of Montana, a sanitarian at the Missoula
City-County Health Department collected tap-water
samples from a row of clapboard houses on Front Street
in Milltown that showed high concentrations of
arsenic.
Hoping there had been a mistake, the Health Department
ordered a second, larger batch of samples. The
arsenic levels were even higher, and 35 families were
advised not to use their well water for drinking or
cooking.
Woessner read the resulting stories in the newspaper
and called the county to offer his expertise. Soon
thereafter, he recruited Johnnie Moore, another young
faculty member and geologist, and they started
hunting for the source of the arsenic in Milltown's
drinking water.
"At first, everybody was pointing over the fence
to the plywood plant," Woessner remembered recently.
Owned at the time by Champion International Corp., the
big sawmill and plywood plant just across the
railroad tracks in Bonner had previously contaminated
several residential wells with lignin and tannins.
But no one had tested the water for arsenic.
There were also two abandoned dumps not far from
the townsite. Six hundred feet from one of the
contaminated wells, crews had paved over and pushed
aside the refuse during construction of Interstate
90.
Maybe there had been a train wreck or a highway accident
that spilled some sort of chemical onto the
ground or into the water, Woessner thought. The polluted
wells were sandwiched between the railroad
tracks and the interstate, a stone's throw from both.
But nobody remembered an accident, and neither Woessner
nor his students could find anything like
that in the records.
And there was Milltown Reservoir, created in 1908
by the damming of the confluence of the Clark Fork
and Blackfoot rivers. In 1975, a chemistry graduate
student from UM had collected sediment samples
from the bottom of the reservoir and found copper, zinc
and lead.
But she didn't analyze for arsenic.
"We'd better go get some samples out of the bottom of the pond," Moore said.
Woessner went to the department chairman and came
back with "our first grant," he said. "Twenty
bucks to rent a chain saw." Moore nabbed a couple
of graduate students and a plastic sled.
Twenty years later, the now middle-aged professors
laugh when they remember the day they took the
first tell-tale sediment samples from Milltown Reservoir.
"We were all bundled in big parkas," Moore
said. "It was so dreary and cold. But the main problem was
that the chain saw had a very short blade and the ice
was about 18 inches thick. So we had to pound
holes in the ice with a steel bar, and by the time we
punched through, we were covered with freezing
water."
"It was brutal," he said. "It was
snowing, and the wind was blowing. One of the graduate students
was
from India; I think we just about killed him."
Four times, the scientists and their students punched
through the ice and lowered a grab sampler - two
scoops hinged like a clam shell - on a rope to the bottom
of the reservoir. Four times, they snapped the
clam shell shut in the sediment and pulled it to the
surface.
A couple of hours later, they were - happily - off
the ice and en route back to the university with the
sediment samples that would point the finger at Milltown
Reservoir, and later at the old Anaconda
Copper Co. mines and smelters at the headwaters of the
Clark Fork River.
This time, they looked for arsenic.
"Back when all this started, no one understood
how far contaminants could be transported from a big
mining site and still be quite elevated," Moore
said earlier this month, as another winter's snow swirled
outside the office he still occupies at the University
of Montana.
It seems odd now, so casually is the relationship
between mines and reservoir sediments assumed, but it
was unproven and hotly contested territory in 1981.
"Those mines were 120 miles upstream,"
the skeptics and mining company presidents said. "How can
sediments be contaminated way down in Milltown?"
"And even if tailings could make it so far down
the river, and even if arsenic were among the
contaminants, how could it get out of the reservoir
sediments and into the groundwater?"
"Twenty years ago, we didn't understand the
geochemistry of arsenic," Moore said. "We didn't know
that there could be another whole set of processes in
a reservoir that would release arsenic into the
groundwater. Milltown was really the start of our understanding."
It took until July of 1982 for Moore and Woessner
to find someone who would analyze their first batch
of sediment samples. "Nobody had any money,"
Moore said, "and we weren't set up yet to do our own
analysis. I just kept working on the state until they
ran our samples."
Meanwhile, Woessner mapped the water table in and
around Milltown. By the time the lab work came
back showing elevated levels of arsenic in the reservoir
sediments, he knew it was possible for
groundwater to move from the reservoir north into Milltown.
"There was a big difference between the elevation
of the water in the reservoir and the elevation of the
groundwater in Milltown," he said. The drinking-water
aquifer was down-slope from the reservoir water,
so the potential was there for water to move from the
pond into the contaminated wells.
"We weren't convinced at that point, but it
certainly looked more like the reservoir could potentially be
a
source of arsenic. The hydrology was right. We just
had to figure out the chemistry."
"Once Bill worked out the flow paths, it was
obvious that the reservoir sediments were the source of
arsenic," Moore said.
While later, deeper sediment samples would yield
higher concentrations of arsenic and heavy metals, the
first readings were nonetheless riveting. Arsenic levels
in the sediments scooped from the frozen
reservoir ranged from 86.5 to 154.8 parts per million,
similar to values reported in areas of Lake
Washington polluted by smelters in Tacoma, Wash., and
six times greater than concentrations found in
sediments slated for cleanup in Lake Michigan.
The only relatively "clean" sample taken
during the geologists' trek across the ice came from the
Blackfoot River. All three samples of sediment taken
from the Clark Fork arm of the reservoir were
polluted with arsenic, copper, lead, zinc, cadmium and
manganese.
Common sense suggested the source, Moore said. Copper
ore is oftentimes rich in arsenic. Processing
and smelting the rock releases arsenic as tailings and
into the air. The richest deposit of copper sulfide
ever extracted sat at the top of the Clark Fork River
drainage.
Moore remembers looking upriver that summer 20 years
ago and wondering: "Is the whole bloody river
contaminated?"
Marcus Daly verified the first remarkably dense deposit
of copper himself, at the 300-foot level of the
until-then modestly producing Anaconda silver mine.
At the 600-foot level, the vein widened to 100 feet,
the purest - at 55 percent - deposit of copper sulfide
ever found.
"Mike," he called to his foreman. "We've
got it." The Anaconda became a copper mine, and Butte
became "the richest hill on earth" as the
newly introduced electric-light and telephone technologies drove
up the red metal's value.
At first, mines and smelters operated side by side.
"Some mines did not even bother using a smelter,"
said Missoula historian Don Spritzer. "They simply
laid the copper sulfide ore among logs in huge piles
and ignited them, a process known as heap roasting."
The citizens of Butte suffered mightily, albeit silently,
from the resulting clouds of poisonous smoke.
Each time the city adopted, then attempted to enforce,
an air-quality ordinance, mine and smelter owners
threatened closures and the city backed down.
All the while, copper baron and Daly rival William
Andrews Clark went about town - and meetings of
the Montana Legislature - declaring: "I must say
that the ladies are very fond of this smoky city . . .
because there is just enough arsenic there to give them
a beautiful complexion."
Construction of the massive copper reduction works
and Washoe Smelter in Anaconda - one of Daly's
enterprises - spread the pollution across an even wider
area. Farmers in the Deer Lodge Valley tried, all
the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to stop the deposition
of arsenic through the air, but could not
overcome "The Company."
What didn't go into the air went into Silver Bow Creek and the Clark Fork River.
"Basically, the whole process of mining is to
dig up rock and grind it into stuff that's really fine-grained
so you can get the metals out of it," said Moore.
"And, almost always, you have a small percentage of
metal and a big percentage of waste rock. So you mine
a ton of rock and you've got to get rid of 95
percent of the stuff that you ground up and separated.
And you dump it in a big pile next to the mill
because it costs you a whole bunch of money to take
it someplace else. And if there's a river there, that's
great because the water just carries it away."
Just as the citizens of Butte instinctively knew
why they were dying of lung disease and Deer Lodge
Valley farmers knew why their cattle were dying of arsenic
poisoning, the U.S. Fish Commission knew
why it "did not find any fish whatever" when
biologists netted the Clark Fork River near Deer Lodge in
1891.
But Daly, Clark and their successors simply continued on.
Daly aligned himself with some of western Montana's
earliest lumbermen, forming the Montana
Improvement Co., constructing a sawmill on the banks
of the Big Blackfoot River at Bonner and
sending legions of loggers into the woods. Their first
log drive down the Blackfoot in the spring of
1886 delivered 20 million board feet of timber to the
Bonner mill.
Some of the processed lumber went - as ties and fuel
- to the railroad. Some went - as mine timbers and
fuel - to Butte. The rest supplied the development of
western Montana.
It was Clark, whom historian Spritzer described as
"an aloof little man with a penetrating gaze and a
knack for making money," who brought the boom to
Milltown - another lumber mill, a dam and
powerhouse, an electric trolley and a Riverside Park
he hoped would rival the grandeur of Butte's
Columbia Gardens.
Milltown was then called Riverside, in deference
to the point of land it occupied at the confluence of the
Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers.
For centuries, Indians had passed nearby on their
trail to the buffalo. Their artifacts have been found, in
recent years, alongside Milltown Reservoir. Returning
east with the Corps of Discovery in 1806, Capt.
Meriwether Lewis had followed the rivers a ways. And
in November of 1861, road builder John Mullan
established his winter encampment at the rivers' junction.
A handful of farmers - the McCormick, Hill, Ray and
Davenport families - were the first white settlers in
Milltown. John McCormick owned the land that is now
Milltown and most of the ground flooded by the
building of Milltown Dam.
Workers at Daly's Bonner mill were the first to build
homes on the bluff above the rivers. McCormick
leased them the lots, and mill managers pretended not
to see as lumber disappeared - and homes
appeared - "by moonlight."
Bonner and its neatly appointed rows of "company
houses" and elegant Hotel Margaret was home to
mill managers. Riverside provided the respite for mill
workers, many of whom were newly immigrated
from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Canada. The old Finn
Hall still stands, albeit displaced to West
Riverside by the building of Interstate 90 and relegated
to storage after many of the Finnish families
moved away.
Clark arrived in Riverside a newly elected U.S. senator,
monied and powerful. In 1903, McCormick sold
the townsite and much of his farm land below the bluff
to Clark. In 1905, Daniel Bandmann, a renowned
Shakespearean actor and - in his later life - gentleman
farmer, sold Clark the 20 acres at the rivers'
confluence.
Meanwhile, Clark henchman A.H. Wethey acquired water
rights on the Clark Fork and Big Blackfoot,
sufficient to operate a power plant. And on Friday,
Sept. 13, 1905, construction of "the great Clark dam"
began.
Built of timber cribs filled with rock collected
from mountain sides and river banks nearby, the dam was
among the largest hydropower plants of its time. The
electricity its turbines produced followed two
11,000-volt transmission lines to Missoula and another,
smaller line to Daly's sawmill. Clark soon built
a sawmill of his own - the Western Lumber Co. - in Milltown
and an electric street car line from
Missoula to Bonner.
On Friday morning, Jan. 10, 1908, the Missoulian
announced the dam's completion and its reservoir's
filling:
"The gates of the huge dam were first lowered
on Sunday evening. They were lowered in a gradual
manner and in the short space of 26 1/2 hours a stream
of water 15 inches deep was flowing over the
large spillway, while the waters were backed up the
Missoula (Clark Fork) River a distance of one and
one-half miles, completely inundating land that but
a short time ago was used for agricultural purposes.
"The back waters also extend a considerable
distance up the Big Blackfoot River, and in one place cover
a former county road to the depth of 12 feet. The deepest
spot is near the center of the dam, where the
water measured 27 feet yesterday afternoon. The total
area of the ground covered by the pent-up waters
is nearly 600 acres."
Construction superintendent George Slack used the
occasion to boast of the building materials
consumed by the dam.
"Two million feet of timber were used in the
dam proper," he told the newspaper, "while in the concrete
work, which is of vital importance, 5,000 barrels of
cement found their way. Just how many thousand
tons of granite are in the huge dam is a pretty hard
question to answer; hundreds of tons of structural
steel are also to be found in the great mass of strength
that is nearing completion, and when the last piece
of timber is added to the dam it will be in such condition
that the highest waters ever known in this
vicinity will not affect it in the least."
Five months later, Clark's dam was in shambles.
The great flood of 1908 preceded the placement of
streamflow gauges on the Clark Fork River. The
U.S. Geological Survey, which keeps track of such things,
later estimated the flood's flow at East
Missoula - 2.8 miles below Clark's dam - at 48,000 cubic
feet per second.
Photographs provide the only lasting evidence of
the flood's historic extent. In Missoula, every bridge
washed away, stranding townspeople north and south of
the river. Last to go was the Higgins Avenue
Bridge. City engineer Mayo shooed spectators off the
span at 10 p.m. on June 5; the bridge washed
away an hour later.
In Milltown, water poured over the top of the young
dam's northern bulkhead and was deep enough
downstream to fill the powerhouse to a depth of 6 feet.
Fearing the entire structure would give way and
its electrical generating equipment would be lost, Clark's
men used dynamite to blow out a section of the
crib-work near the river's southern bank.
In a speech at his retirement banquet in December
1910, Wethey said it was three weeks before he could
reach the dam, "as the railroads were washed out."
"When I got down, I found the entire river running
at the rate of 20 miles an hour through the gap made
by the action of the water after the woodwork had been
broken up with the dynamite explosion," he said.
"I realized our greatest need was to plug up the
hole as speedily as possible and get our power plant in
operation, and suggested floating in crib-work loaded
with rock and sinking them in the opening.
"The work of the repair was done under the superintendence
of Mr. Inch, and in 60 days we had
plugged up the hole and had the power plant in operation,
although it took us more than a year to
complete the repairs to the dam that we thought necessary."
Wethey said two of the engineers he brought to Milltown
during the repairs suggested he abandon the
original dam and build a new one not far below. Wethey
continued with the reconstruction.
No less serious were the flood's consequences for
Milltown Reservoir, which was ever after filled with
more than 6 million cubic yards of sediment carried
by the torrent of water. Where the dam created deep
pools and large expanses of open water, the flood produced
shallow pools - rarely more than a few feet
deep - and large acreages of wetlands.
Not long thereafter, complaints about the water in
Milltown's wells began. "Water practically surrounds
Milltown, and yet it has always been a problem here,"
Mildred Dufresne wrote in a 1976 history
published by the Bonner School Bicentennial Committee.
"In early Milltown, there was said to be only
one good well. There were a few other wells which did
not have very good water. It was thought they
were contaminated by the copper mine residue-laden waters
of the Clark Fork River."
"It's like your life. You didn't see this coming."
Vic Andersen was the state of Montana's Superfund
cleanup coordinator when the first reports of
arsenic in Milltown's drinking water came across his
desk in 1981. He is the same today.
"At least initially, it didn't matter much where
the arsenic was coming from," Andersen said. "We just
wanted to find those people a source of clean drinking
water."
County sanitarian Ed Zuleger went back to the little
houses along Front Street a second time, just in case
the first samples had somehow been in error.
Uno Hill lived in one of the original, turn-of-the-century
cottages, Zuleger said recently. He was cranky
when Zuleger knocked at the door, asking to draw another
bottle of water from the kitchen faucet. He
balked when Zuleger returned yet again, this time with
news of the high arsenic readings.
"I've been drinking this water for 50 years," Hill said. "I don't see any reason to change now."
The water had always tasted kind of funny - metallic,
he said. Sometimes, it was discolored. Others in
the neighborhood said the same. (The tests also showed
high levels of iron and manganese; thus, the
metallic taste.)
But no one in Milltown was all that worried, really,
and no one - "no way," Zuleger said - imagined all
that would follow: Milltown Reservoir's designation
as the first Superfund hazardous waste cleanup site
in Montana and one of the first in the nation. The upper
Clark Fork River's addition to Superfund's
National Priority List, along with Butte and Anaconda.
The 20 years of research and wrangling.
"Back then, I'd tell my new hires, 'You've got
a good five-year run on a project like this,' " Andersen
said.
"The Milltown cleanup has outlasted most of them.
It was always pushed to the back of the stove
because it was at the bottom end and everybody kept
focusing on the upstream stuff."
It took four years to find and construct a new community
water system in Milltown, so cobbled together
were the old wells and water lines. In the meantime,
health officers found high levels of arsenic in
vegetables grown in Milltown gardens - 2.66 parts per
million in one spinach sample, 1.41 parts per
million in a head of lettuce. Normal, or background,
levels for arsenic in vegetables are 0.001 parts per
million for spinach and lettuce.
The new Milltown community water system was completed
in June of 1985, tapping a clean source of
water up the Blackfoot River. And Zuleger - who is still
a sanitarian for Missoula's Health Department -
went back to the 35 homes on the bluff for one more
batch of water samples.
Sixteen taps produced high arsenic readings.
"We ended up putting in new hot water heaters
and plumbing in most every house," Andersen said.
"Over time, the arsenic had built up in the lines
and it was still leaching out, even with clean water.
Finally, late in 1985, we got everybody clean water."
And now, finally, comes the time for a decision on
what to do about the reservoir sediments that were,
indeed, the source of the arsenic in Milltown's drinking
water - and about the dam that led to their
deposition at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark
Fork rivers, five miles upstream of Missoula.
"Both Milltown and the Superfund process itself
were more complicated than anyone envisioned 20
years ago," said Andersen. "On a site like
this, where you are tagging somebody with the bill, it's pure
enforcement."
"I'm going to make you clean this up."
"No you're not."
"Yes I am."
"We went through a lot of struggling with a
lot of lawyers," he said. Atlantic Richfield Co., successor
to
the Anaconda Copper Co., was ultimately tagged with
the Clark Fork cleanup, including Milltown.
Geologists Moore and Woessner were part of that effort,
proving through their research that the
"mineral fingerprint" of the sediments in
Milltown Reservoir matched those of the mines and tailings in
Butte and Anaconda.
Montana Power Co., which purchased Milltown Dam from
Clark's estate in 1929, went to Congress and
won an exemption from the Superfund cleanup liability.
Then the dam itself became part of the debate,
most notably after a spectacular ice floe in February
1996 damaged the structure and scoured
fish-killing sediments from the reservoir bottom.
Missoula health officers continued their vigil in
Milltown and were joined by a growing contingent of
state and local politicians. As the cleanup decision
neared, their activism intensified into a call for
removal of sediments and dam.
Special-interest groups entered the fray, as well.
Environmentalists. Economic development committees.
School kids. Whitewater kayakers. Trout lovers. There
were billboards likening Milltown Dam to a time
bomb and counterpoint bumper stickers proclaiming the
structure an historic treasure.
And the Environmental Protection Agency said a cleanup
plan will be picked and proposed in 2002. "I
actually feel relieved," said John Wardell, chief
of the agency's Montana office. "The what ifs are about
to go away."
"We always knew that we would eventually come
back very actively to the Milltown site," Andersen
said. "It took us the better part of 20 years to
get here, but the time is right."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com.
The series
Today: The history of Milltown, its dam and the mining wastes in its reservoir.
Monday: What's wrong with the sediments? Can they
be safely removed? What can be learned from
other cleanup projects?
Tuesday: A look at Milltown Dam and the problems
and possibilities it creates for people and fish. A
visit to dam removal sites in Wisconsin.
Wednesday: As a cleanup decision nears for Milltown, a look at dueling politics and personalities.
Filling the reservoir
From the Daily Missoulian, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1908:
Yesterday afternoon, the gates at the Clark dam above
Missoula were partially lowered and the filling
of the big dam was begun; this morning the gates will
be closed entirely and the dam will be filled to
its capacity. This event marks the completion of a work
that is important to Missoula; it has been
delayed from time to time by happenings that could not
be prevented and could not be foreseen; the
dam is a model of construction and is now ready for
service.
The filling of the dam will create a large lake and
the process will require several days at the present
stage of the river. When it is completed, there will
be power sufficient to meet the needs of Missoula for
a long time, and the plant is so constructed that it
can be easily made to furnish additional power
whenever the requirements of the city become greater.
It is expected by those in charge of the work that
the plant at the dam will be ready for use in a week.
This is an important day for Missoula; the city
will have a supply of electric power second to no municipality
in the state.
Power generation
From the Daily Missoulian, Friday morning, Jan. 10, 1908:
Construction work on the new Clark dam, a short distance
below Bonner and seven miles east of
Missoula, which began on Friday, Sept. 13, 1905, is
now practically finished, and the first electric
light generated from water power of the Big Blackfoot
and Missoula rivers was turned on yesterday
afternoon, in the presence of a party who made the trip
from this city in automobiles for the purpose of
witnessing the novel sight. The party was made up of
A.H. Wethey of Butte, who represented the Clark
interests; Mrs. Wethey; George R. Brown of Butte, who
is superintendent of the water department of
the light and water company; S.R. Inch, superintendent
of the electrical department of the company;
John M. Evans, H.E. Chaney, H.T. Wilkinson, John Bonner
and a couple of newspaper men. The
members of the party were shown over the immense plant
by Superintendent George Slack, who has
been in charge of the work at that place for the past
few months.
The first electricity generated at the new power
house flashed over the wires at 3:14 o'clock yesterday
afternoon, and for a period of several minutes the big
plant was brilliantly illuminated.
The interior of the power plant contains six large
turbines, which when connected and running to their
full capacity, will generate 5,000 horsepower. Two small
turbines act independently of the others, and
it was these that were operated yesterday. The plant
is one of the most substantial ever erected for
power purposes. It is absolutely fireproof throughout
and is erected upon a concrete foundation sunk
to bedrock. The walls of the building, facing the river,
are 18 feet thick at the bottom and are of solid
concrete, reinforced with hundreds of tons of structural
steel.
Mullan's winter stay
Winter was settling in when Lt. John Mullan arrived
at the junction of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork
rivers with his soldier-road builders in November 1861.
Their mission was to build a military road from
Fort Benton to Walla Walla, Wash., a distance of 640
miles. The rivers' junction was to be their winter
camp.
It was an ordeal by all accounts, including the following
from "Captain John Mullan," by Addison
Howard, Washington Historical Quarterly, July 1934:
Lieutenant Mullan went into winter quarters at the
confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark's Fork rivers,
seven miles east of the present site of Missoula, Montana.
The location of this camp, called
Cantonment Wright in honor of General George Wright,
was on a bluff forming the east bank of the
Big Blackfoot. The winter schedule included the building
of a bridge across the river and the
construction of the heavy grades in Hell Gate Canyon.
The weather played a trick on Lieutenant Mullan that
year, for the winter of '61-62 was unusually
severe. Snow fell in November and lay on the ground
until mid-April. For days, the weather was too
cold for the crew to work. While half of them cut and
hauled wood, the others, awaiting their turn at
the chores, would sit huddled around the fires.
In January, one of the men, Charles Shaft, volunteered
to take the mail to Salt Lake City for the reward
of $500 offered by Mullan. Having no horse, he started
on foot for the Deer Lodge Valley to get one.
While walking on a log across a frozen slough, he slipped
and broke through the ice, wetting his feet.
At first, he gave little heed to such a minor accident.
When, shortly, his moccasins froze to his feet, he
became alarmed and returned to the camp of the military
escort on the Clark's Fork River, about 18
miles east of the cantonment. Before he could reach
the soldiers' winter quarters, the frost had
penetrated to his bones, causing him excruciating pain.
An Indian brought word of Shaft's misfortune to Mullan.
He dispatched two men, Bill Hengan and
Dave O'Keefe, who covered the distance on foot in a
day, nearly exhausting themselves breasting the
deep snow. A day they rested, then, placing Shaft on
a hand sledge, the pair trekked along the ice on
the river and reached the cantonment on the afternoon
of the second day, to receive a big drink of
whiskey for their arduous labors.
Dr. George Hammond, the army surgeon attached to
the expedition, examined Shaft's mortifying feet
and found it necessary to amputate both his legs above
the knees. The road workers raised a purse of
several hundred dollars for him, and he was left in
the care of the Jesuit fathers at the Pend d'Oreille
mission.
A chinook in February broke the steady cold. Then,
with the snow in a melting state, a sudden freeze
formed a solid crust of ice, making it impossible for
the stock to paw for food. As a result, many of
Mullan's and the settlers' animals died the lingering
death of starvation.
But the work of road building had to go on. Replacing
his losses from the horse herds of the Indians,
Mullan pushed on in the spring to Fort Benton, putting
the finishing touches to the road. At its eastern
terminus, he paid off part of his crew and the rest
returned with him to Walla Walla. There, in August,
the expedition was disbanded for the last time. Many
of the road builders remained in the Northwest,
some to farm and others to prospect. In recognition
of Lieutenant Mullan's meritorious service, he
was promoted to the rank of captain on August 11 of
'62.
Stone looks back
Beginning in June of 1911, Missoulian editor Arthur
L. Stone wrote a weekly feature titled "Following
Old Trails" and providing "historical descriptions
of men, places and events of Montana." On one of his
first forays, Stone took an afternoon trolley ride from
Missoula to Bonner.
From "Following Old Trails: To Bonner," by Arthur L. Stone, Missoulian, Sunday, June 24, 1911:
There was nothing, 20 years ago, between the Bandmann
ranch and the mouth of the Big Blackfoot.
The old road dipped down over a steep bank when it reached
the river and it climbed up the east bank
over a narrow dug road that was literally covered with
rolling stones. It was the toughest piece of
road I ever saw. Between those two banks, however, nestled
the beautiful McCormick ranch, where the
sturdy pioneer held the fort and commanded the strategic
position which the confluence of the
Blackfoot and the Missoula afforded.
Now that ranch is under 10 or 20 feet of water. The
big power dam of the Missoula Light and Power
company backs up its vast volume of water over the old
ranch, over the old road and far up the river.
The road has shifted up the stream to a more comfortable
crossing and the big flat which was then a
waste now furnishes the sites for the great power plant,
for the new mills of the Western Lumber
company, for the delightful Riverside park and for some
mighty fine ranches. Since that time, there
have been some snug fortunes made from the little farms
which lie close under the north hills and
which have furnished Bonner with its garden truck and
its small fruits.
All along the line, there have been changes. From
the Missoula end to the Bonner terminus and at
each of these places, there have been wonderful transformations.
Missoula has multiplied herself by
four since then. Bonner has duplicated herself many
times. Each has become beautiful, and, between
there has been the same splendid development. The transformation
has been great but it is only an
indication of what may come; it just outlines the possibilities.