July 6, 2017

Cartwright Tunnel could be lights out

Cartwright Tunnel could be lights out

By Jack Dura
Farmer Staff Writer

Ray Trumpower walks across the Fairview Lift Bridge and sees the centuries past.
“There’s a lot of history up here,” the chairman of the Friends of the Fairview Bridge said, eyeing the Yellowstone River vista off the big bridge.
Upstream is a Lewis and Clark campsite. Downstream is Sundheim Park, a paddlefishing hotspot. In 1876, a steamer on the river made record time to Bismarck carrying wounded soldiers from the Battle of the Little Bighorn, he said.
And across the Yellowstone, the state’s only railroad tunnel, built by hand in 1913.
“I still don’t know how they did it” Trumpower said in awe. “You couldn’t do it today.”
Today the tunnel is deteriorating as a result of age and a compromised structure.

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WATFORD CITY WEATHER