Welcome to The Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I'm your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We'll answer questions, big or small, about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans, for Montana, this is The Big Why.
Austin Amestoy: If you live in Montana, you’ve heard them thundering by. Trains and rail lines built the state as we know it today. But it’s what happens to the rails after those trains are no longer running that prompted this episode.
Joining me to talk about it is MTPR producer Nick Mott. Glad to have you here, Nick.
Nick Mott: It’s good to be back — and good to be doing a second episode on trains!
Austin Amestoy: I absolutely agree. Our question today comes from Missoula resident Damon Cott. He’s an electrician who grew up in Butte.
Damon Cott: “Yeah, I’m interested in learning what becomes of rail lines and their associated right-of-ways when they’re no longer in use.”
Austin Amestoy: Cott told me he was particularly interested in what might happen to the Bitterroot Branch line, which runs from Missoula to Darby and has been dormant for years. As it so happened, he said he was working on a job right next to the historic Milwaukee Station in Great Falls when I called him.
Damon Cott: “Which isn’t a train station anymore — it’s an apartment complex and business thing that they’re doing here.”
Nick Mott: An old train station — well, that’s certainly fitting.
Austin Amestoy: I thought so too! That station was linked to the Milwaukee Road, one of the most significant passenger and freight lines that ran through Montana during the 1900s. It carried thousands of people across the state on a line running from Chicago to Seattle.
It also happens to be one of the best examples of what can happen when a rail line is abandoned.
Nick Mott: I take it that’s where this story begins.
Austin Amestoy: You guessed it. Let me take you about 160 miles west of Great Falls to a building that looks an awful lot like the one Damon Cott was talking about.
Bill Taylor: “Oh, the towers — I’ve always felt this one is too high, architecturally.”
Austin Amestoy: That’s Bill Taylor. He’s a Montana rail historian, and he’s pointing up at the tall brick tower of the former Milwaukee Depot in Missoula. It kind of resembles a castle with Spanish roof tiles, and it sits right alongside the Clark Fork River.
Austin Amestoy: “So, Bill, tell me what we’re looking at right now, where we’re standing.”
Bill Taylor: “You’d be right square in the middle of the Milwaukee Road main line. It went down the second abutment on Beartracks Bridge, right in line with those power poles down there.”
Nick Mott: Huh — but you just said the Milwaukee Road was abandoned. Are the tracks still there?
Austin Amestoy: Where we were standing — no, they aren’t. Instead, there’s a long trail that runs right along the river where the tracks used to be.
In fact, a trail is maybe the most common second life for an abandoned rail line.
Nick Mott: But, what happened to the Milwaukee Road? Why would a railroad abandon an entire line?
Austin Amestoy: That’s an important question. Taylor helped answer it with a crash course in Montana rail history inside the Milwaukee Depot.
He says rail was essential to Montana’s industrial development. It brought people here, yes, but also helped those people get their products to buyers around the country — think lumber, coal, copper and grain. Taylor puts it this way:
Bill Taylor: “If we take a modern analogy: everybody who has a business now wants to be online. You have to have an online presence. Same thing was true in 1883 — if you weren't on the railroad, you didn’t survive.”
Austin Amestoy: By the 1900s, several transcontinental lines ran through the state. And, in order to reach customers where they made their product, the railroads had to build branch lines off the main routes and into surrounding communities.
Taylor says that made economic sense when trains were the only long-range transportation game in town. But that changed.
Bill Taylor: “Nowadays, they’ve given that up to the truckers, because the truckers can do that so much more economically and quickly than the railroad can, and the cost of the upkeep on those branch lines with a little bit of traffic is astronomical.”
Nick Mott: Right, that makes sense — railroads would only want to keep a line if they can make money off it.
Austin Amestoy: Exactly. In 1980, Congress significantly deregulated the rail industry. Taylor says that made it much easier for railroads to abandon lines
The Milwaukee Road had been struggling financially for decades, and declared bankruptcy in 1977. A few years later, it formally abandoned its Pacific Extension from Miles City, Montana to Renton, Washington.
Nick Mott: So, that was the end of rail traffic on the Milwaukee Road. But, not the end of its story, right?
Austin Amestoy: That’s right. Some of the line the railroad followed, especially where it ran through communities, has since been converted to walking and biking trails. That’s because other entities can acquire the railroad’s so-called “right-of-way” or the little path it uses to cut through private property.
That includes the Milwaukee Trail, which runs right along the Clark Fork River in Missoula. It’s named after the old rail line and directly traces its path through a large part of town. Today, it’s highly trafficked by residents and recreationists alike.
Bill Taylor says trails like this one represent something of a trade-off: using property that generated economic capital to generate social capital instead.
Bill Taylor: “Better for Missoula? Not necessarily a better money-producer. But, better for quality of life in Missoula? 100%, I think.”
Austin Amestoy: Maybe the most locally famous stretch of the old Milwaukee Road that turned into a trail is the “Route of the Hiawatha.” It’s a 15-mile stretch of the railroad that crosses the Bitterroot Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border.
Nick Mott: Is it easy turning an old rail line into a trail?
Austin Amestoy: Generally — no, it’s not. The process often involves negotiations between the rail company that owns the line, organizations seeking to transform it, the federal government and plenty of lawyers. But, it’s gotten a bit easier through the years thanks in large part to the Rails to Trails Conservancy.
The conservancy’s policy director, Eric Oberg, told me its founders were worried about what would happen to the long stretches of track being abandoned during the 1980s.
Eric Oberg: “They thought about, ‘What’s the best way to try to preserve these connections — these really important connections between communities?’”
Today, the conservancy gives local organizations the tools to navigate that web of policy and convert abandoned lines into trails. It says there’s now more than 25,000 miles of rail-trail across the U.S.
Nick Mott: Have they done much work in Montana?
Austin Amestoy: A fair amount, yeah. Rails to Trails has worked on projects near Butte, Manhattan, Belgrade and Livingston. Their moonshot is what they call the “Great American Rail Trail” — essentially one interconnected trail that crosses the country from Maryland to Seattle.
Nick Mott: Wow, that sounds pretty ambitious. But, I’m still thinking about the second part of our listener Damon Cott’s question — about what might happen to the old train line that runs from Missoula to Darby. Did you get to the bottom of that one?
Austin Amestoy: Partially, Nick, yes. And this is the last issue I wanted to hit on. One thing I learned very quickly while reporting this episode is, there’s often no good way to tell if a rail line is actually abandoned just by looking at it.
Nick Mott: So, the old Bitterroot Branch Line hasn’t seen a train in years, but isn’t actually abandoned?
Austin Amestoy: No, it is not. That track used to serve timber mills in the valley, and it went largely dormant in the '90s. But, the line is listed as “inactive” by the state transportation department. That means it's still owned by Montana Rail Link and is private property.
Nick Mott: Interesting. Some railroads choose to abandon and sell their lines, others hold on to them. Why keep a line you’re not using?
Austin Amestoy: Experts told me the reasons for that are numerous and complicated. But one of the biggest is just holding onto that land for potential reactivation in the future.
During the nation’s westward expansion, the federal government granted railroads more than 100 million acres of land to build their lines. Today, a lot of those rail lines run through complex patchworks of private property. Once that line is gone, it would be incredibly difficult to piece it back together.
Nick Mott: Right, that makes sense. OK, one last thing. Did you find out if Montana Rail Link has any plans for that old line in the Bitterroot?
Austin Amestoy: I did my best, but I just don’t know. I reached out to Montana Rail Link and BNSF for comment on this story, but neither company got back to me.
Nick Mott: Well, Austin, thanks for taking us along the rail trail.
Austin Amestoy: Now we want to know what makes you curious about Montana. Submit your questions below. Let's see what we can discover together!
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