Oldtimer
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 13980
Location: Northeast Montana
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 Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:45 am Post subject: Another Interesting Sunday Article |
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Interesting article about the old Depression program that touched so much across this state- and the country---which I've heard several oldtimers mention they think may be the direction the country is again heading before we get out of the current/impending financial crisis....
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Traces of New Deal remain in Montana
By DONNA HEALY
Of The Gazette Staff
To pull the United States out of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the New Deal in the early 1930s, leading Congress to create an alphabet soup of federal relief programs.
Historians still debate the effect of those programs, but traces of the New Deal's legacy pepper Montana's landscape.
In Eastern Montana, years of drought and hardship preceded the Depression, and, by 1935, almost a fourth of the state's population was dependent on some form of federal, state or county relief assistance.
Americans hungry for jobs went to work building highways, bridges and schools; improving parks; and painting murals. In Eastern Montana, Fort Peck Dam stands out as the most prominent symbol of the era. But plenty of less-obvious landmarks - from scenic trails to horse barns -remain in use on the 75th anniversary of the New Deal.
In Yellowstone County, the New Deal funded projects large and small. Money from the Public Works Administration helped build Billings' City Hall in 1940. At Pioneer Park, a Works Progress Administration crew created tennis courts north of the wading pool in 1935.
WPA projects seemed to start, stop and stumble across the county.
A 1936 article in The Billings Gazette lambasted the WPA for glaring mismanagement and missed deadlines.
The same year the WPA crew worked on the tennis courts, they dug three lily ponds along the creek through Pioneer Park. The beautification project cost $3,537, with the city picking up just $137 of the total cost. But another $300 had to be spent by the park board in 1936, to hire a "keeper of the ponds" to chase away Billings youths using the lily ponds as wading pools.
While the lily ponds have vanished, other New Deal projects remain in daily use.
Practically every two-lane highway in Eastern Montana was built with the help of WPA funds, said Jon Axline, a historian with Montana's Department of Transportation.
A prime example around Billings is the Old Hardin Highway, which was improved in the 1930s, Axline said. The road climbs out of Lockwood, clinging to the hillside in a series of tight curves.
In the 1930s, roads were built to fit the landscape. The interstate highway took the opposite approach, molding the landscape to fit the road's design.
Other examples include Highway 87, from Billings to Roundup, and the old Frontage Road, south of the interstate between Billings and Laurel.
In Billings, WPA work crews substantially re-engineered Zimmerman Trail, which was originally hacked into the Rimrocks in 1890 by brothers Joseph and Frank Zimmerman. The WPA crew of 100 to 150 laborers started the project in 1939 with the intention of finishing in four months. The work took at least seven months.
The WPA also funded the Mossmain railroad overpass at the East Laurel exit. The design was meant to be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional, Axline said.
The bridgework remains pleasing to the eye, despite the removal of its decorative concrete guard rails, he said.
The far more substantial East Bridge on the Yellowstone River, which connects Lockwood and Billings, was built with WPA funds in 1935 and served for 58 years before it was replaced in 1993.
About 800 small timber bridges from the '30s remain in use in Montana.
Bolstered by the New Deal, the Montana Highway Department had funds for more than just roads and bridges.
After amateur archaeologists discovered the Pictograph Caves in 1937, WPA funds controlled by the highway department combined with the efforts of local organizations to buy the site, excavate the caves and build a tiny museum on the grounds to attract visitors.
Vandals burned the museum to the ground in 1945, but, in August, the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department plans to start construction on a new visitor center.
During the mid-1930s, the highway department embarked on ambitious plans to draw tourists to the state.
The first official Montana highway map came out in 1934, followed by wooden highway historical markers, roadside picnic areas, information centers and ports of entry stations.
Bob Fletcher, the department's plans engineer at the time, envisioned a chain of roadside museums across Montana on Highway 2 and Highway 10. Fletcher, described by Axline as the father of Montana's modern tourism program, saw the museums as joint efforts between the highway department and local chambers of commerce.
Only two museum buildings were actually built, one near the fairgrounds in Billings and one in Laurel.
The tiny museum in Billings lay across from the fairgrounds along Highway 87. Museum staff came from the National Youth Administration, a New Deal youth employment program. The state highway provided some exhibits.
"I don't know what was in it," Axline said. "It's still a big mystery. I would like to find photos or info on what the exhibits were like."
WPA crews also worked on projects on the grounds of what is now MetraPark. Three horse barns built by the WPA are still in use at the fairgrounds.
In Laurel, the two-room museum built by the highway department contained both museum exhibits and the city's police department. The log building in Fireman's Park now houses Laurel's Chamber of Commerce.
During the summer, the museum became a stopping spot for motorists on their way to Yellowstone National Park over the newly opened Beartooth Highway. Tourists could view stone tools from Pictograph Caves, dioramas done by a highway department graphic artist, fossils, dinosaur bones and a large mounted bison head.
Max Big Man, a Crow tribal member, was the Laurel museum's caretaker. In summer, he and his family lived in two tepees on the grounds, gave talks to tourists and did demonstrations on Plains Indian life.
Nearby was a caged black bear named Susie. Big Man's tepee sat between the building and the railroad tracks, said Gay Easton, who first served on Laurel's City Council in 1974 and has been on the council continuously since 1990.
"I remember the bear being there," said Easton, who has helped students document Laurel's history for the upcoming Centennial celebration this summer.
"I have a picture that showed part of the tepee and the gazebo. It's tucked away someplace," he said.
After the United States entered World War II, federal funding for the museum in Laurel and other highway projects dried up. The building served as Laurel's police station until 1959 and also as a place for the Retired Men's Club to play cards.
New Deal programs funded other civic improvements around Laurel, including the gymnasium of the old Laurel High, which is now part of the old middle school on Colorado Avenue, Easton said.
Along the Yellowstone River, the Civilian Conservation Corps put up the buildings at Laurel's Riverside Park as a place for workers to stay. The site later housed World War II POWs who supplied labor for the surrounding farms.
Six of those log cabins were moved away from the park to the east end of Laurel, where they still remain, Easton said.
New Deal programs put artists to work as well as laborers and construction workers. Six Montana post offices, including the Downtown Post Office in Billings, gained murals commissioned by the Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts.
The Billings mural of a cattle drive rises above the doorway of what was once the postmaster's office on the east side of the building's lobby. The scene shows a cowboy crouched down by his horse. While he smokes a cigarette, he watches a herd of longhorn steers make its way up out of the valley.
A glass partition partially obscures the mural, which was painted by Great Falls artist Leo Beaulaurier.
J. K. Ralston painted the post office mural in Sidney, according a 2003 article in Montana: the Magazine of Western History written by Elizabeth Mentzer.
Along with civic landmarks, the WPA was also responsible for erecting some less-long-lasting structures across Eastern Montana, including the construction in 1935 of 1,022 outhouses in the 21 counties that made up the Billings district.
Full Article and pictures:
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/06/01/features/magazine/18-newdeal.txt |
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Clarencen
Member
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
Posts: 113
Location: South Central SD
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:34 am Post subject: |
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I don't know OT. The PWA and the WPA did a lot of good things for the country some are still visible evn today, but they sort of went against the grain of most people's beliefs.
Sometime I want to write down some of the happenings during my lifetime, and the depression did have a bearing on it. How my parents delt with the depression. the dust bowl years, and the recovery period aftewards has effected my attitides and beliefs.
From what research I hve done, I found the low point of the depression was about the middle of 1933, I was only 4 years old at that time so do not remember a lot about it.
Even today those who study thedepression have different explainations of it's cause. This is partly because there are several different theories of how the economy should work for prosparity. Some believed then, and still do today that a large supply of goods and produce leads to better times. Prices then are lower and there are more buying. Some believed that low wages made more jobs affordable, so there would be workers and more people who could buy. These people opposed unions and set wage rates. Other theories were to put more money into the economy even with with unbalanced budgets would stimulate the economy.
I have looked first at the so called roaring 20's. They were not as grand as people were led to believe. The war to end warswas a thing of the past but there were trouble spots. Farm income was low and wages for the working man was low. But credit was available to buy the many new things that were being produced. People lived high. The stock market crash did not cause the depression, but it lite the fuse. Only a small percent of the population had invested in the stock market. Investers and banks lost money though. The led to panic as people lost confidence in the economy.
Hoover didn't cause the depression, he may not have did the right things to stop it though. Most people hated Hoover, my Dad didn't like him: maybe not so much because of his policies as the fact that during the 1928 election campaign the Republicans tried to smear and attack the Catholic religion. Ther would have been a depression even if Al Smith would have been elected, his policies were not that much different than Hoovers. That was to keep spending in check and to help the big businesses so they could produce more and could produce more cheaply, this was expected to filter down and benifit all.
Roosevelt saw it the other way. People needed money in order to buy, there was no need to produce more if no one could buy.
I do remember the WPA. When we would go to town, we would see the road workers. Many worked single handed although some worked with teams. It was always said they just leaned on there shovels really not much road could be built with the shovel in 1934. It seemed to me that most people I knew held the WPA worked to some disdain, considering them the never do wells. By the fall of 1936 all this changed, these people found themselves working on WPA. Only a handfull of the families in my community got along without being a part of it.
Roosevelt's programs reduced unimployment from 25% to 15% by 1935.
After the 1936 election, the conservative side of the Democrat party got more power. There were only a few Republicans left in Congress, They thought that Roosevelt's policies were to costly. Although some of the WPA programs continued, they favored outright grant to the poor and unemployed. Unemployment shot back up to 19%. We didn't really realize that here on the farm though.
When World War II started the US became the principle supplier and financer of the war. This ended the depression
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