(Bridge 24DW0247) Spanning Griffith Creek at Milepost 6.1 on Road 300 Glendive Vicinity Dawson County Montana
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GRIFFITH CREEK BRIDGE HAER MT-156 (Bridge 24DW0247) HAER MT-156 Spanning Griffith Creek at Milepost 6.1 on Road 300 Glendive vicinity Dawson County Montana PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA FIELD RECORDS HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD INTERMOUNTAIN REGIONAL OFFICE National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 12795 West Alameda Parkway Denver, CO 80228 HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD GRIFFITH CREEK BRIDGE (Bridge 24DW0247) HAER No. MT-156 Location: Griffith Creek Bridge (Bridge 24DW0247) Spanning Griffith Creek at Milepost 6.1 on Road 300 Glendive Vicinity Dawson County Montana UTM: 12/985744/5236692 Present Owner: Montana Department of Transportation Helena, Montana Present Use: Highway Bridge Significance: Built in 1932, the Griffith Creek Bridge is significant for its association with the federal emergency work relief programs to combat the effects of the Great Depression initiated by President Herbert Hoover in January 1931. Like the New Deal that followed in 1933 under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hoover intended his limited relief programs to combat high unemployment in the United States by putting men to work on road and bridge projects. During the 24-month period between January 1931 and December 1932, the Montana Highway Department improved 2,107 miles of roads and constructed 385 bridges, 83 percent of which were treated timber stringer structures like the Griffith Creek Bridge. The Griffith Creek Bridge is a representative example of the standard Montana Highway Department-designed treated timber bridge built between 1917 and 1941 and a rare example of one that still retains its distinctive double-railed wood guardrails. There have been no modifications made to the bridge since its construction in 1932. Historian: Jon Axline, Montana Department of Transportation July 2015 Griffith Creek Bridge HAER No. MT-156 (page 2) Part I. Historical Information A. Physical History 1. Date of Construction: On August 12, 1932, the Montana State Highway Commission awarded a contract to the Elliott and Nisbett Company of Sand Point, Idaho, for $6,236 for the construction of three timber bridges on the Glendive – Sidney section of US 10 in Dawson County. The bridges were part of an on-going Montana Highway Department project to improve US 10 utilizing federal Emergency Relief funds to ease unemployment in rural Montana during the opening years of the Great Depression. The contractor completed the bridges by the highway commission’s deadline in 1933.1 Interstate 94 bypassed the Griffith Creek Bridge in 1969, relegating it to serving local traffic. 2. Architect/Engineer: During the 24-month period between January 1931 and December 1932, the Montana Highway Department, with the aid of federal emergency work relief programs, improved 2,107 miles of roads and constructed 385 bridges, 83 percent of which were treated timber structures. Among them was the Griffith Creek Bridge. The Montana Highway Department developed a standardized design for treated timber stringer bridges, like the Griffith Creek Bridge, in 1915 and modified the design in the 1920s. The Griffith Creek Bridge is typical of that standardized design. 3. Builder/Contractor/Supplier: Elliott and Nisbett Company of Sand Point, Idaho. Over a four year period between 1928 and 1932, Edward Elliott and Merrill Nesbitt of Sand Point, Idaho, built 55 treated timber bridges on Montana’s highways.2 4. Original Plans and Construction: The Griffith Creek Bridge is a three-span treated timber stringer structure. It is 57′ long and 22′ wide with a roadway width of 21′. The bridge rests on two sets of four timber pile bents. The abutments are earth with timber backwalls braced with wood piles. The deck comprises 12 lines of timber stringers supporting a wood deck overlain with asphalt. Timber curbs with sheet metal drains flank the deck. Guardrails consist of two rows of horizontal wood beams bolted to vertical wood posts attached to the outside stringers. The bridge has not been modified and appears as it did when constructed in 1932. A copy of the construction plans are in the Field Records. 1 A review of the Montana State Highway Commission meeting minutes for 1933 and 1934 revealed that the commissioners did not enforce the Liquidate Damages clause in Elliott and Nesbitt’s contract. That indicates that Elliott and Nesbitt completed the contract on time in 1933. MSHC, books 5 and 6. 2 MSHC, Book 5, pp. 172, 177. Griffith Creek Bridge HAER No. MT-156 (page 3) 5. Alterations and additions: Other than occasional asphalt overlays of the timber deck, there have been no modifications made to the Griffith Creek Bridge since its construction in 1932. The bridge is situated at its original location and the setting of the site is intact. B. Historic Context: On June 20, 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark divided the Corps of Discovery to explore as much of the northern Great Plains as possible before returning to St. Louis. Clark and ten others, including Sacagawea, traveled through the Gallatin Valley and crossed what would later become known as Bozeman Pass into the Yellowstone River drainage on July 15th. The company then proceeded down the Yellowstone River with the intention of rejoining the expedition near the river’s confluence with the Missouri River. On August 1, 1806, Clark passed by the future site of Glendive, Montana. Clark’s sojourn through the area was rainy and cold. His journal entries in the latter days of his journey through the Yellowstone Valley reflected the bad weather and his dour mood. He described the country “in every respect like that through which I passed yesterday.” That country was “washed into Curious formed mounds & hills and is cut much with reveens [sic].” Clark and his companions reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River on August 11 and rejoined the expedition the next day.3 Eastern Montana near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers was a crossroads for Native Americans and Euro-Americans by the 1820s. Fur trappers and traders, working out of Fort Union and other nearby trading posts, were familiar with the area. In 1854, Sir George Gore, an English nobleman, along with a retinue consisting of 40 employees, valets, guides, 112 horses, 14 hounds, and 6 wagons, spent two years decimating the animal population of the Glendive area. The carnage was bad enough to compel the Indian agent at Fort Union to complain about the slaughter to his superiors in Washington DC. In 1856, Gore named Glendive Creek for a stream he was familiar with in his native Ireland.4 An increasing Euro-American population in southeastern Montana after the American Civil War and the Northern Pacific Railway’s (NPRR) designation of the Yellowstone Valley as the route of its transcontinental line put increasing pressure on Native Americans who sought to protect their bison hunting grounds. While the conclusion of the Bozeman Trail war in 1868 and the Fort Laramie Treaty of that year established reservation boundaries for the Crow, it didn’t prevent the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne from entering the area to hunt. In July 1873, Captain Grant Marsh piloted the steamboat Key West on the Yellowstone River to the mouth of Glendive 3 Bernard DeVoto, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952), 406-407, 432; Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark: Over the Rockies to St. Louis, volume 8 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 186, 258, 268, 269. 4 Mark H. Brown, The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone: A History of the Yellowstone Basin, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1961: 106-109; Don Spritzer, Roadside History of Montana, (Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1999), 391; Montana Place Names from Alzada to Zortman: A Montana Historical Society Guide, (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2009), 108-109. Griffith Creek Bridge HAER No. MT-156 (page 4) Creek to support of NPRR surveyors and their military escort. About eight miles upstream from the creek on the Yellowstone River, Marsh established a stockaded storage area to provide supplies to the railroad surveyors and their military escort, elements of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The military returned to the Glendive area in 1876 as U.S. Army troops under the command of General Alfred Terry and Custer advanced into Sioux and Northern Cheyenne-held territory along the Yellowstone River as part of the military’s Centennial Campaign. Glendive Creek served as a rendezvous point for soldiers after the Battle of the Little Bighorn and during the campaign afterwards to subdue the Indians.5 In 1880, work crews resumed on the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad westward to the Pacific coast. In the summer of 1880, Maj. Lewis Merrill reached the mouth of Glendive Creek in advance of the construction crews. Recognizing the strategic location of the creek, he and several partners formed the Yellowstone Land and Colonization Company (YLCC) to plat a town at the confluence of the creek and the Yellowstone River. Even before the arrival of the railroad in July 1881, the settlement, named for the creek, boasted a post office, general stores, saloons, and a “palace of terpsichorean and theatrical art,” which ran day and night. In October 1881, Glendive’s wooden buildings were “of the roughest description” according to the Scottish newspaper, The Glasgow Herald. Father Eli Lindesmith described the buildings on Glendive’s main street as “all log cabins with mud roofs.” The YLCC quickly sold 100 lots in the new community and the Northern Pacific Railway Company declared Glendive the division headquarters of the 585-mile stretch of railroad between Mandan, North Dakota, and Livingston, Montana. Railroad facilities at Glendive included depots, a water tower, repair shops, warehouses and a roundhouse.