By Jon Axline, MDT Historian; Reprinted with MDT Permission

Montana is the Last Best Place, and it’s also a place of lasts and one-of-a-kinds. For bridges this seems particualarly true. The Dearborn River High Bridge is the only on of its kind remaining in the United States. The Pugsley Bridge, the subject of a future Newsline article, is the only cable stay bridge of that design in Montana, and quite possibly the world. Wooden truss bridges were once a common sight in Montana. But now, perhaps only one remains - the Brockway Ford Bridge in Musselshell County.

The first bridges in Montana were timber bridges built by entrepreneurs looking to make money by charging tolls to use the structures. Even after the territorial legislature abolished the toll system in 1870, the counties continued to build timber bridges, mostly with materials close at hand. That’s why in northwestern Montana historic photographs show an abundance of bridges built of logs. In other parts of the territory, however, the counties used wood processed at local sawmills to build bridges. All that began to change in the 1880s with the arrival of the railroad, which provided access to steel mills in the Midwest. The first steel bridge in Montana crossed the Missouri River at Fort Benton. Built in 1888, thew bridge still stands.

But steel wasn’t a material that all counties could easily afford. Most of those types of bridges required bonding approved by local voters to fund them. Timber bridges were cheaper to build and could be fabricated locally, an especially important fact since the United States was experiencing a nationwide economic depression in the 1890s. The only components that needed to be imported from out of state were the metal fittings that held the structures together.

In late June 1893, a group of Roundup, Montana, businessmen petitioned the Yellowstone County commissioners in Billings to build a new bridge across the Musselshell River on the south edge of Roundup. Their argument persuaded the commissioners to direct the county clerk to advertise for the construction of a bridge across the river. The first advertisement requesting bids for the bridge appeared in the June 29, 1893 Billings Daily Gazette.

The commissioners opened bids for the bridge on July 22, 1893, at the county courthouse in Billings. Four bridge companies submitted proposals for the structure. County Surveyor Charles Dewar provided the basic specifications for the bridge, but left it to the bridge companies to fin-tune the design. Consequently, each company submitted multiple options for the structure. The submittals primarily concentrated on differences in the abutments and floor systems for the proposed bridge. Two weeks later on August 8, the commissioners awarded the project to the Minneapolis-based S.M. Hewett & Company for its bid of $6,100. The county placed a deadline of June 6, 1894, to complete the project.

During the winter of 1893/1894, Hewett fabricated the timber components for the bridge. By late April, the company had begun shipping the dissembled truss members to the construction site. Work on the abutments of the structure progressed rapidly until the first week in May when rising water on the Musselshell River caused a delay in the construction of the foundation. Despite the setback, Hewett completed the bridge by the June 6th deadline. On June 14th, Commissioners J.C. Bond and Oscar Gruwell inspected the bridge and accepted it from the contractor. The men told a Billings Weekly Gazette reporter that they “were well pleased with the work, and are assured that with a little care, the bridge will last twenty years.”

Despite the Yellowstone County commissioners’ prediction, the commissioners of newly formed Musselshell County began planning for the replacement of the bridge in 1911, just seventeen years after its construction. The flood of new residents to the county because of the 1909 Enlarged Homestead Act and the recent completion of the Milwaukee Road Railroad induced the commissioners to devise an ambitious plan to construct a network of new roads and bridges throughout the county. The commissioners planned to move the timber truss at Roundup thirteen miles downstream to Brockway Ford near the community of Delphia. When thed Milwaukee Road Railroad completed its line through the valley in 1908, the ford was an important river crossing for ranchers and homesteaders traveling to railroad stations in the valley.

In late August 1911, Musselshell County contracted with the Security Bridge Company to move the old Roundup bridge to Brockway Ford, where it currently stands. The company proposed $4,830 for the relocation, which included the construction of new concrete abutments and “two coats of good red paint” for the bridge.

The contractor immediately began preparations to move the bridge. By early October 1911, the company had dismantled the old bridge and shipped it downriver on railroad cars to the Milwaukee Road station at Delphia. The contractor hired a local rancher, Lou Goffena, to move the timber and metal components of the bridge nearly four miles to the construction site. It wasn’t until the second week of February 1912 that cement arrived at the construction site for the abutments. The Roundup Record declared that having a bridge at the crossing would be “a great thing and something that has been long needed.” The Security Bridge Company reassembled the bridge and opened it for traffic in the spring of 1912. In 2003, Musselshell County closed the bridge because of significant structural deficiencies, and the county and MDT intend to replace the bridge sometime in the next few years. The county, recognizing the historic significance of the bridge, intends to salvage part of it and place it on display at a yet-to-be-determined spot.