Distinctly Montana Magazine

63 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m NATALIYA DICK family home is wallpapered in blueprint. The oldest Duff son is a Corps engineer, while the father and two youngest sons are gov- ernment laborers—a clever narrative mechanism by which Doig conveys the dramatic class disparity between the engineers de- signing the dam and the Montana workers who were building it. In the boomtowns, roads were two ruts in the ground. It was dusty, it was muddy, it was usually a real pain trying to get around. There were sometimes boardwalks, but no streetlights; if there were lawns, they were few and far between. Everything was made out of wood, and electricity and running water were not part of the deal. People used open fires or coal-burning stoves to keep warm. Makeshift insulation worked about as well as it sounds it did, and inside temperatures matched whatever was happening outside. The boomtowns had no shortage of bars, restaurants, and mov- ie theaters to entertain workers and their families. Businesses on wheels were popular. Water wagons made deliveries for five cents a gallon; fresh produce was trucked in from nearby farms and towns. Coal got delivered daily as well. In the spring of 1935, the Montana Board of Health approved the first garbage routes in the boomtowns. A month later, Valley County passed an ordi- nance that specified required maintenance of outhouses, garbage storage, and garbage disposal ("stored in fly-tight containers and buried or burned once a week"). Several communities had schools. Even though the feds at first insisted that the federally-funded school in Fort Peck had sufficient capacity for all children in the area, doubling down on this position by refusing to fund other schools, most gov- ernment workers preferred their children attend school in the towns where they lived. It's interesting that the federal govern- SQUARE DEAL MARTINSVILLE YORKDALE IDLEWILE VALLEY CONE CITY CACTUS FLAT FORT PECK DAM FORT PECK LAKE MIDWAY NEW DEAL MINOT WHEELER DELANO HEIGHTS FORT PECK TOWNSITE SPILLWAY MISSOURI RIVER OLD RIVER CHANNEL LAKEVIEW WILSON TOWNSITE Boomtowns of Fort Peck

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