| Conveniences Sorely Needed: Montana's Historic Highway Bridges, 1860-1956 Contributor(s): Axline, Jon (Author) |
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ISBN: 0972152253 ISBN-13: 9780972152259 Publisher: Montana Historical Society Press OUR PRICE: $35.96 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2005 Annotation: Old bridges do more than just span rivers. They provide important connections between the people who built them and those who came after. Many of these historic structures reflect the promotional spirit that fueled Montana's growth. For the state's earliest communities, a good bridge could mean the difference between prosperity and oblivion. Bridges speak to the time in which they were built. They provide physical reminders of significant periods in American history - the Great Depression, for example, when bridge building flourished as the federal government looked for ways to put people to work. Some of Montana's bridges are engineering marvels; some are beautiful. All afforded valuable service to their communities - facilitating the transportation of crops to market, enhancing tourism, and providing safe passage over the state's treacherous waterways and busy rail lines. Today, historic bridges are rapidly disappearing from the Montana landscape. Time and weather have taken their toll, as has traffic. Nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century bridge designers never intended their creations to handle the number of cars that now travel Montana's roads - or the speed at which they usually travel. Yet as old bridges are demolished to make way for new ones, growing numbers of citizens have come to see the state's remaining historic bridges as visible and underappreciated reflections of Montana's past. Transportation historian Jon to the explores the past, illuminating the forces that built Montana's historic bridges and the structures' importance tothe communities they served. And, while recognizing that not every bridge can be preserved, he ably conveys their significance asmonuments to our collective history. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - General - Transportation |
| Dewey: 388.132 |
| LCCN: 2005020368 |
| Physical Information: 0.69" H x 7.52" W x 10.5" (1.56 lbs) 173 pages |
| Themes: - Geographic Orientation - Montana - Cultural Region - Pacific Northwest - Cultural Region - Western U.S. |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Old bridges do more than just span rivers. They provide an important historical connection between the hopes and dreams of the people who built them and those who continue to benefit from their use today. Many of Montana's historic highway bridges are symbols of the cooperative spirit that led to economic and social stability throughout the Big Sky Country for over a century. Other bridges, such as those built during the Great Depression, are physical reminders of significant periods in American history and tell stories about the breadth of Montana's transportation past. In addition, these bridges reflect both the best and worst in engineering techniques and serve as testaments to the science of practical bridge design, ranging from the aesthetically delightful Fort Benton Bridge to the more mundane Fred Robinson Bridge in the Missouri Breaks country. In the modern era, where many people seem to be in a hurry to get where they're going as fast as possible, old bridges can be obsolete nuisances that need to make way for modern conveyances. There is, however, a growing group of preservationists who see them as symbols of an earlier time that are worthy of saving. Today, Montana's historic bridges are a visible, rarely appreciated, and fast disappearing part of the state's historic landscape. Yet the stories they tell about Montana's complicated social history are important to understanding the dynamics of Montana's development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and reflect the optimism many people had, and have, for the state's future. |