Distinctly Montana Magazine

61 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m by LINDSAY TRAN I N HIS 1996 NOVEL BUCKING THE SUN, author Ivan Doig relates through the eyes of the romantically-put-upon Duff family the saga of Fort Peck Dam's rise from the Mis- souri River during the Great Depression. Doig uses multiple nar- rators to round out the story of the dam's construction in Valley County, a massive New Deal project that employed up to 11,000 workers every year between 1933 and 1940. Imagine thousands of people flooding into an area that lacks the infrastructure to support a population several times its existing size…well, I guess we don't have to imagine that. Thousands of people need all sorts of stuff: they need hous- es to live in, roads to drive on, they need water and schools and electricity and trash collection and churches and places to eat and drink together. On the windswept plains of northeast Mon- tana, all of it was in short supply. So what popped up to fill the void? The boomtown. Couched in myth and forever colored by nostalgia and preconceptions, the boomtown is emblematic of two diametrically opposed phenomena: the human tendency to- ward perennial transience, and the equally human tendency to root stubbornly wherever we land. THE "GOVERNMENT TOWN" VERSUS THE BOOMTOWN The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drew up plans for Fort Peck Dam in early 1933. Some Corps staffers rented homes in Glasgow. If they had families, their families lived with them. Most single staffers camped in tents or granaries near the dam site. Glasgow and the nearby town of Nashua were infinitely more comfort- able, but the commute to work was long and treacherous: a doz- en-plus miles on a dirt road that turned into gumbo for much of the year. Plans for a government town closer to the dam also began in 1933, and housing for Corps personnel and their families start- ed getting built in spring 1934. The town was christened "Fort Peck." Most homes were one-bedroom and based on templates, much like mail-order catalog homes. The next step up were the houses designed for Corps members who had families. They were larger and had garages. The crème de la crème were the dozen high-style homes built for Corps officers. Government and contracted workers had quite different op- tions for housing in Fort Peck, depending on their marital status. Fort Peck had apartment buildings for married workers, dorms for single men and single women, and barracks for contractors who didn't work directly for the government. From the start, there wasn't enough housing for everyone who needed it. Boomtowns started springing up along the dam site long be- fore the Corps members moved into their own housing, and the shortage of worker housing in the government town ensured the survival of these boomtowns for the duration of the project. The Corps granted permission to workers to build temporary shacks along the dam site that first winter, no doubt after people had already started doing it on their own. NATALIYA DICK

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