Hey, Ptah, Wetzelbill, and other present and former Hi-Liners

[swag]

Hoping a Wider Highway Can Save Their Livelihoods


“We’re fighting for our life,” said Bob Sivertsen, an auctioneer in Havre, Mont., and president of the group pushing for the widening of Highway 2.


CHINOOK, Mont. — For the last decade, residents of northern Montana have been praying for asphalt to stave off the disappearance of their dwindling ranching and farming towns.

Now, with the election of a senator from rural Montana, they are lobbying with renewed vigor to get the state and federal government to widen all 666 miles of Highway 2 in Montana, a move they hope will keep them on the map. About 40 miles of the highway, known as the Hi-Line, is four lanes.

“We’re fighting for our life,” said Bob Sivertsen, an auctioneer in Havre who is president of the group pushing for the highway-widening project, which is known as Four for Two and is estimated to cost more than $1.5 billion. “We don’t want to die.”

Most businesses, Mr. Sivertsen said, simply will not locate along a two-lane road.
. . .

Pat Williams, a former nine-term Democratic congressman who now teaches public policy at the University of Montana, said: “There are some places where the adage ‘Build it and they will come’ won’t work. The Hi-Line is one of those places. Expanding a highway will not attract a significant increase in commerce.”

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1. Obviously Pat Williams has been to Havre.

It still mystifies me that my parents moved us there in 1971. And that they still live there. They will never leave.

[Ptah]

4. Life on the Hi-Line

Life on the Hi-Line is a constant readjustment to deal with a declining
population. Many businesses and homes are ramshackle or shuttered. School
districts have been forced to combine. High school football teams play
with eight- and six-man teams. Some towns, here and in other parts of
the plains, have bought radio stations and stores to operate as they have
become unprofitable. Many people have to drive 100 miles or more to get
to a good-size grocery store or a doctor.

There are some bright spots. Hunters flock here in the fall for the pheasants
that can be seen along the road scratching gravel. One of the two Indian
reservations along the highway is building a casino, and there has been
a sharp rise in the local economy the last two years because of energy development.

[Ediacara]

8. I spent the summer of 03 digging dinosaurs in Rudyard

Very cool town, but so close to the brink, it wasn't even funny. Two bars, one restaurant, one convenience store, and (strangely) one full sized branch of Wells Fargo Bank. The one restaurant, the Eagle's Nest Cafe, hadn't paid the rent in several months, but was still operating because just the idea of losing the town's only restaurant was too much.

Chester was depressing, and Havre wasn't much better. At least Havre has some nice grocery stores, but the mall was only at about 40% occupancy. It was like an absolute ghost town.

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2. I still have a little slip of Bob Sivertson's campaign notepad paper

I think he was running for the state senate in 1984 or something.

My dad wrote in blue pen underneath Sivertson's grinning photo, "Smiles and Common Sense!"

[Ptah]

3. Build it and they will come

Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat whose family homesteaded along the Hi-Line
near the town of Gildford, also supports the widening.

The Hi-Line, named after the Northern Pacific rail line that carried Norwegian,
German, Swedish and other immigrants west to homestead land, created a
patchwork of farms and ranches on the northern Great Plains. But the aridity
of the plains was too great to support small farms, and old maps show dozens
of towns that no longer exist.

The population here in Blaine County peaked in 1940 at more than 9,500.
Last year the census put it at 6,600. In neighboring Phillips County, the
population peaked around 9,300 in 1920 and has since shrunk to around 4,200.
The population across the Hi-Line would most likely be far lower if it were
not for substantial federal subsidies paid to farmers and ranchers here.

A staggering blow was dealt the Hi-Line, Mr. Sivertsen said, when Interstate
90 was built through the southern part of Montana in the 1970s.

[hfojvt]

5. Picking on I-90?

seems like a bigger problem would be that I-94 did not go up to Minot from Bismarck and then go across the hi-line, or it could have turned north from Glendive, but there seem to be some geographical barriers around Kalispell as the road wanders way north and south instead of going east to west. It would make more sense to terminate in Shelby, but then the road would sorta goto nowhere. There do not seem to be good east-west roads in Alberta either.

[dropkickpa]

6. Totally unrelated

But I love that photo!

[swag]

7. It's a great shot, I agree.

The photographer's name is Lynn Donaldson.

I suspect s/he is a Hi-Liner. Will investigate and report back.

[swag]

9. Kick for I don't know why.