Everyone has a story to tell

     Four years ago while traveling, I accidentally stumbled upon Fort Peck, which is not a town nor a "fort" in a military-sense; it's technically a dam on the Missouri River in northeast Montana.  Only about 250 residents call this place home, but the area swells to hundreds of summer visitors, mostly Montanans, during the frequent fishing tournaments. There's also a well-maintained public grass-runway airfield nearby; about a dozen folks built homes with attached hangars near the airfield.

     Fort Peck isn't on the tourist circuit, so few Americans are familiar with the Fort Peck Dam. The construction of the dam began in 1933 and was completed in 1940. It was supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill authorizing the building of the dam that would eventually employ almost 11,000 workers during the Depression.

     I fell in love with Fort Peck from the moment four years ago when I stepped inside the historic Fort Peck Theater and the historic Fort Peck Hotel and visited a media history of the construction of the earthen dam at the free Interpretive Center (which is also a natural history museum with models of dinosaurs and displays of dinosaur bones found during the construction of the dam). So, when I found myself accidentally in northeast Montana again (having aborted my plans to travel further west in Canada due to wildfires), I was drawn to Fort Peck like a very good old friend.

     Fort Peck is brimming full of stories. But it isn't just the fascinating Missouri River stories from Lewis and Clark's Expedition, and it isn't just the deceased dam workers whose preserved stories reveal an incredibly hardscrabble life, it's also stories from visitors and campers next to me at the campground. Like me, most of the visitors and campers come to Fort Peck to play outdoors. We're basically "non-touristy" folks, and many have unique stories to tell.

     Across from my camp site was a woman (also a grandmother!) who is traveling solo on her motorcycle via Route 2 from California to Maine, and back to California on Route 6 later this year. She's also writing a blog about her travels. We have much in common, and I enjoyed her company for a short evening. We swapped stories about our lives and the different kinds of gear for bare-bones traveling.

      Nearby was another camper from North Dakota who pulled in with a "little red barn" that caught every one's attention. And when he cranked the barn down to ground-level (no need for steps up into the trailer), he really pulled in the curious camp mates.  Inside was all the comforts of home, plus a hole in the floor for ice-fishing in Canada.

 

     Four years ago, I had an opportunity to take these aerial photographs of the Fort Peck Reservoir from a powered parachute ultralight. It's other-worldly from the air. The climate is semi-arid, completely different from the climate on the other side of Montana. The reservoir this year, however, is much lower due to lack of rain all year.

     The nearby wildlife refuge named after western artist Charles M. Russell is also other-worldly from the air; in fact, it's almost impossible to visit by vehicle.

    After setting up camp and swapping stories with my camp mates, the next day I bicycled to the Theater to once again admire the beamed ceiling, light fixtures, and the lobby where many original promo-photos of famous actors and actresses from the 1930s are displayed. The Theater offers plays and musicals on summer weekends (mostly performing arts college students) but being there mid-week, I regretfully missed their performance. My next stop was a rocking chair on the porch of the Hotel where I imagined Franklin D. Roosevelt must have had a drink and a cigar smoke with his buddies (he visited twice during the dam construction). As I rocked, I re-read the wonderful 63-page brochure of the history of the dam (downloadable free here, warning - large pdf file).

      Fort Peck also had new paved trails around the downstream areas, about four miles of trails, for pedestrians and bicyclists. And it was fun to re-visit the Interpretive Center which has enough information for another half-dozen more visits. I plan to visit Fort Peck regularly during the next decade.

     My short three-day mid-week visit was sweet. When I left Fort Peck, I stopped by nearby Hinsdale to visit with Daniel and Francine Jensen, a couple in their late 80's who I had met and visited with four years ago. Daniel had installed the Lewis and Clark historical markers along the Missouri River and was commissioned to do the heavy equipment work involved. He was a tall, robust and hardworking man; he told us many wonderful stories. Francine had made breakfast for all of us, and at their round table we laughed at their stories, especially the story of how they met in high school and eloped. I ran into their neighbor Jerry, a retired rancher who flies a powered parachute ultralight, and he told me Daniel had died less than a year ago and Francine was away for a few days. I will always remember their stories, too. Everyone has a story to tell.