Miller recalls bridges linking old roads

The fourth in the series covering the Roads and Trails program presented Aug. 7 by the Upper Swan Valley Historical Society (USVHS).

CONDON – For his part in the Upper Swan Valley Historical Society's Roads and Trails program, Gene Miller talked about the earliest bridges in the area. Miller moved with his family to the Upper Swan Valley region in the late 1930s.

According to Miller, "When you came from Swan Lake there were only two bridges - one across Cold Creek and one across Lion Creek. The rest [of the streams and creeks] you drove through. And sometimes they would have to put trees or rocks in the bottom of a creek to keep [the car] from sinking down too much. And oftentimes it would be down and up quick. So it was quite a ride."

Homesteaders, Miller explained, built their settlements near year-round streams so they had a continual supply of water. As if seeing the old road in his mind, Miller traced the eastern route for his listeners. After cresting the summit, the traveler came to Fred Rollin's place. Rollin settled near a spring, rather than a stream. The road continued fairly close to what is now Owl Creek Road and went on the east side of the Holland Ranch. Miller recalled there being a bridge across Holland Creek. The road next led to Barber Creek. Miller said the settlements in the Barber Creek area were mostly up on the hillsides because the lowlands were "pretty sloppy" and "pretty hard to get through."

The road continued to Buck Creek, then Rumble Creek and Cooney Creek. Miller said it would "just wander through the woods to get from one place to the other" until it came to Smith Creek. According to Miller, there are still remnants of the old road east of where the landing field is now. The road continued on down to the Forest Ranger Station on Condon Creek. From there it wandered back and forth across Simpson and on to Lion Creek.

Miller said, "Lion Creek was a little bit bigger and in the springtime it was a little more of a challenge to get across, so they built a bridge. And all these bridges were log bridges. They would put big larch logs, two or usually three of them, from one side of the creek to the other side and then put lodgepoles crosswise. And so it was kind of a bumpety-bumpety-bump across. When the mills came in, they started putting planks on top."

"Yeah, it was a challenge," Miller continued. "And I can remember it took about three hours to go from this area up to Bigfork. Everything was done pretty much by hand. Oh they'd have some scoops that they'd pull behind horses [to fill in low spots]. But no major changes in the roads came until after the war when they got big equipment like bulldozers and backhoes and things that could move dirt around a little bit and smooth off the hills and fill up the gullies."

According to Miller, the next road was built close to the Swan River because more people had moved into that area. Originally there were only three bridges across the Swan River. The first one built was at Lindberg Lake to provide access to the lodge there. The next log bridge, as Miller recalled, was across Kraft Creek. And then one was built across Glacier Creek, near where the Community Center is now.

"The next one down was Beck Bridge," Miller said, adding, "Beck Bridge got washed out a couple times in the springtime. I remember they had to go in and rebuild it a couple times."

Conversation among the audience pulled up the name Fatty Creek and Miller agreed a bridge spanned that creek also.

Miller said when the new road was created just after World War II, it was done in pieces, straightening out sections here and there. Most of the people continued using the old road though because the new pieces didn't always connect up with the bridges across the creeks.

In winter, road plowing was a haphazard affair. According to Miller, the route from Condon to Swan Lake was almost impassable from the end of October to April.

Travel farther south and into Missoula had its challenges also. Miller said it was dirt road all the way to Rainbow Bend (about mile marker 6 on Highway 200).

"That was where the first pavement was," he said. "But it was just one lane. You'd meet a car and you'd have to stop and kind of pull off. But it took us like three hours to get to Missoula. You went right by the lakes-Lake Alva and Lake Inez -and over Coyote Hill [near Rainy Lake]. And Coyote Hill was pretty steep."

An audience member added, "My grandfather used to say the only thing that would go up Coyote Hill was a coyote. He used to have Model Ts and you couldn't go forwards, you had to turn around and go backwards."

The audience laughed, but Miller agreed, "Yeah, you had to take it backwards."

The southern route continued through Greenough and over Sunset Hill.

Miller added, "That was a real muddy hill. In the wintertime or early spring, the only way you could get over that hill was for one of the ranchers to come out with his team and pull you over. The Stone's were very gracious. I don't know how many cars they pulled over that hill."

According to Miller, when he started school in 1941 teacher Florence Holmes doubled as school bus driver. She lived near Holland Lake and taught at Smith Flats School. Each morning she would drive her 1935 (possibly a 1936) Dodge to pick up the two Lake brothers at what is now the Hungry Bear Grill and Bar. Then she drove to the other end of the valley to pick up Miller and Jaime Holopeter. The fifth student, eighth grader Lucille, walked to school from her home at Glacier Creek. At the end of the school day, Holmes would tackle the road once again to drive the students home.

Someone from the audience asked, "How many days of school did you miss because of the weather?"

Miller replied, "You'd be interested to know that from my third grade to my sixth grade, I did not miss one day of school. I had a mile and a half to walk and some days it was thirty below zero-and you just went."

"Yeah, it was very different in those days," he continued. "First of all, you'd get to school and the buckets of water were frozen. You had a barrel stove and one of the things we three little ones had to do was carry the wood in. The older ones would start a fire in the stove and then we'd put the bucket of water on it and leave it there until it got hot. Then we could take it out and thaw the pump so we could get water again. That usually took half a day. We had classes sometimes with our coats on and we'd stand around the heater."

Miller ended by noting that despite the challenging roads, everyone in the valley, whether they had kids in the school or not, would wend their way to Smith Flats for the end-of-school picnic.

"It was a big deal," Miller said. "It would start about 10 and go until we got tired. Lot of times it was 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The children would have races. The adults would play softball or baseball or something like that. Then of course it was a big thing because most of the families in this area would harvest ice in the wintertime from Holland Lake and we'd put it in ice houses which were full of sawdust. So when it came time for the picnic, everybody would bring an ice cream freezer with some ice and we'd have probably five or six quarts of ice cream. That was a real treat. That was the only time of the year that we got ice cream. Unless we went to town and that was not very often."