The Big Blackfoot Railway
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Location: East of Missoula
The Blackfoot River has been a transportation corridor for hundreds of years, first serving Indian travelers, then later fur trappers, miners, and loggers. The first large-scale timber cutting started in 1885 when the Big Blackfoot Milling Co. located at Bonner. The mill’s principal customer was Butte copper magnate, Marcus Daly. The expanding mines created an insatiable appetite for lumber, and in 1898 Daly’s Anaconda Copper Mining Co. bought the mill.
The mill started the Big Blackfoot Railway to move timber from outlying cuts to the river. The main line ran from Greenough to McNamara Landing which was on the river about five miles north of here. Logs were skidded by horses to temporary branch lines, then transferred to the main line for the trip to the river. At high water, the logs were floated down to Bonner. Once an area was cleared of timber, the temporary rail lines would be moved to the next cut
The Milwaukee Railroad acquired the Big Blackfoot Railway as a branch line about 1910 and the trains ran until 1916 when logging ceased for ten years. Both resumed in 1926, but the railway’s years were numbered. Logging trucks came on the scene in the 1920s and by 1948 had dominated the industry. Hauling by rail had ended by 1957. Trucks also eliminated the need for logging camps, so most of the small communities disappeared too.
One of the locomotives, specially geared for rough track and steep grades, can be seen in the Bonner park.
The Big Blackfoot Railway