Distinctly Montana Magazine

60 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 TODAY... On some days when the water is low in Hap Hawkins Lake, you can still see parts of Armstead, Montana—a bit here and there of the old U.S. Highway 91, a section of submerged track that once belonged to the Union Pacific Railroad, even some foundations of buildings in which the people of Armstead used to live, sleep, worship and do business. Armstead's not quite a ghost town in the traditional sense. Generally, we think of a ghost town as a place where economic prospects dried up, so to speak, or something made living there untenable until people started to move away. But Armstead, founded in 1907, was an entirely viable community when it was aban- doned. What happened to Armstead happened all at once. In 1962, the establishment of the Clark Canyon Dam created a new body of water over the townsite of Armstead. The location is steeped in history—it's close to Camp Fortunate, where the Lewis and Clark expedition encountered Cameahwait, Sacagawea's brother. Ac- cording to the indispensable Names on the Face of Montana by Roberta Carkeek Cheney, "The town was named for Harry Armstead, a miner who developed the Silver Fissure Mine at Polaris." In addition, it was an important terminus for the Idaho-to-Butte stretch of the Gilmore and Pittsburgh Railroad. In an old picture, townspeople look on with apparent excitement as the first blast signals the groundbreaking of the dam on October 1st, 1961. By that time, many of the original buildings had been moved, and its townspeople had resettled. Construction of the dam was completed in 1964, after which the location where they and their families had lived for a century was filled with water and stocked with fish. In the crowd, you can see a toddler wig- gling in his father's arms as he cranes to see the explosion. A man in the foreground laughs as he turns to address an unseen lis- tener. A few children, already bored with the transformation of their landscape, begin to wander away from the adults toward some more enchanting distraction. Everyone is dressed as if for church, in their Sunday best, they used to say. The air seems light and celebratory. And yet the occasion captured in the photograph must have been bittersweet— the dam would allow downstream irrigation and protect against flooding, but for many, it also meant saying goodbye to their homes, or at least the place their homes had been. In some cases, families had been living there for generations. But today, in spring and into summer, the reservoir is a popular fishing loca- tion. A cool breeze blows, and boats play across its surface. Under the lake, the location where Lewis and Clark bartered with the Shoshone lies inundated. And not far off, the town of Armstead's few remaining buildings, like the sturdy old post office, come apart slowly as rainbow and brown trout wend their way in and out of dark, deteriorating rooms. There is no change without loss. If Armstead hosts any ghosts today, they make their forlorn rounds underwater.

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