#elbowoods

Visit this free McKenzie County experience: The Amazing Four Bears Bridge

Bridging cultures, counties and communities – the Four Bears Bridge

Each arched span directs the weight of the bridge into the piers

This mile-long bridge is the latest effort to overcome the continental division of the Missouri River. The Missouri River has been a transportation corridor and a barrier since before Thomas Jefferson.  That’s why he commissioned the Corps of Discovery to learn more…

Alice Young Bear's house and shed on the road.

Elbowoods was one of several Native American towns along the Missouri River which were permanently flooded following the completion of the Garrison Dam in North Dakota in 1953. The Army Corps of Engineers’ Garrison Dam created the third largest reservoir in the country, flooding a quarter of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, forcing the relocation of 325 families, nearly 80% of the population on the reservation at that time.

Read more here and here (p120)

Picture from National Archives and Records Administration

The Memorial Congregational Church sits by itself on a December afternoon on a Mountrail County prairie where it was moved in 1953.

In the fall of 2009, the prairie grasses surrounded the solid church building that once stood along the Missouri River.

Do you ever wonder about those empty country church or school buildings you see out along the highways?  What’s the story there?  For me, it was…