Fifty Cents an Hour : The Builders and Boomtowns of the Fort Peck Dam
Revisiting Project No. 30  Time has changed almost everything. The dust has long since settled on the project worksites. Nature has healed the scarred land. The construction workers have moved on, and the care of their dam and spillway has been handed down. Prairie grass grows over the boomtown sites where shantys and false-front stores once stood. A few old business buildings, remodeled or boarded up, remain. Since 1940 many of the former project people have come back to reminisce about old times at the work and town sites. Their children and grandchildren come and try to imagine what life at the dam was like in the 1930s. They drive through the town of Fort Peck looking for the updated Administration Building, the Recreation Hall, and the Fort Peck Hotel. They visit the Fort Peck Theater, and hope to see its ghost. They move on to the empty lot where the Lutheran Church was a long time landmark, and over to where the service station still is. There is so much history here! Remarkable growth and change have taken place since the dam was built, starting with the first of the two power houses in 1941. The engineering techniques have changed they don t build dams like the Fort Peck dam anymore. The 1930s Corpsmen and workers agree: They don t build dams like the Fort Peck Dam anymore.  Thousands of tourists still come to see the dam and spillway, to visit the old powerhouse museum, the new Fort Peck Interpretive Center (2005), and the warm water Fish Hatchery (2006). Thousands more come for the sport of fishing for walleye, trout, bass, and the multitude of species in the Fort Peck Lake and Missouri River. They watch the deer, elk, and other wildlife in the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge. They participate in boating, hiking, and many other land and water sports in refined or rustic settings. Sight-seeing is still popular. From the observation site on the hill at the east end of the dam, there is a panoramic view of the lake, dam, river, badlands, and much of the wildlife refuge around them.   It is a beautiful four mile drive on Highway 24 across the berm of the dam from the west to the east end. From the two mile main dam section in the middle you can see for miles in all directions: To the south, Fort Peck Lake stretches out to touch a chain of rugged badlands. To the north the Missouri River runs out of the four tunnels under the dam, next to the two huge powerhouses, and into the winding river valley, sending streams through a channel on the west side into the dredge cuts. Off to the northwest is the former government town of Fort Peck, and beyond it, in the cottonwood between a dredge cut and the river, west of Highway 117, is Park Grove the last of the boomtowns. Highway 24 runs east up the hill to where the Spillway Building stands guard over the mile-long spillway below, running to the north. The huge concrete and steel structure is often mistaken for the dam because the dam in its outward earth-friendly simplicity looks more like an enormous lake-side hill with a highway across. From the tops of the dam, spillway, and observation point the panoramic view is stunning in its vastness. Seen through the eyes of the 50-cent an hour workers it s an awesome sight. --MtSky Press