'The Road,' a history

I made two round trips from Trail Creek to Columbia Falls this week and one of my neighbors asked how I fared on the terrible road. My reply was that I thought the road was really good - for the time of year.

How you view the North Fork Road is a matter of perception. If you compare it to Interstate 90 it is always awful. In fact, by comparison, it isn’t a road at all, it’s a nearly impassable ditch.

If you compare it to how it was in 1950 it is greatly improved. In fact in 1950 you could not drive to Trail Creek at all. Until the 1960’s very often the road was not plowed at all unless loggers used bulldozers to plow the road. That meant that folks who lived north of Polebridge laid in supplies for the entire winter. To be safe that meant having food to last from late November until June.

I can remember Madge Terrians supplies nearly filling her ancient ton and a half truck. This filled her walk in root cellar with canned goods and dry goods like flour, rice, and beans were stacked in large metal cans on the stairs. Eggs were immersed in a gelatin like stuff called waterglass and could be kept most of the winter.

Mail, when it could be delivered at all, was a small bulldozer pulling a big sled with a small cabin on it with a woodstove for passengers.

At that time, mail came up the inside road to Polebridge and then crossed the pole bridge to the Mercantile and then north on the west side of the river to the Trail Creek Post Office at Moose City.

All of this meant that trips to town were rare and you had to do without a lot of things we consider essential today, like fresh fruit. Esther Day once told me that her most remembered Christmas gift was an orange!

By comparison to those days, the North Fork Road today is really good. You can almost always drive to town and return any day of the week. Flathead County usually plows the road within two days of a major snowfall and today’s 4X4 vehicles can break through most snowstorms and blizzards.

That is why I think the road is good this week – for the time of year.

The paved road is bare to Canyon Creek and you can travel at 60 mph.

From Canyon creek to Camas bridge the road is bare and full of potholes. Travel at 20 mph or less!

Camas to Polebridge really is good. The new crushed rock has held up well and you can drive at 35 mph, which is the speed limit.

Above Polebridge the road is rough and the snowpack is breaking up with ruts, which requires slow driving.

Altogether, a trip to town takes from 2 hours to 2.5 hours, compared to one hour and fifteen minutes in the summer. And there is no dust!

I think the road is good for this time of year. What do you think?