Highway to the Sky
My latest article for Montana Magazine, “Highway to the Sky,” has just hit the stands. When editor Butch Larcombe told me he was looking for something beyond the standard tourist pap on the Beartooth Highway, something that could bring the road and region to life the way I had done with the Bighorn Canyon, I grimaced. It was a tall order, especially in 1500 words.
But then I recalled the incredible pictures I’d been looking over at the Carbon County Historical Society Museum, during my research for Images of America: Red Lodge, depicting the highway’s construction and early years. And I recalled a surprisingly compelling narrative that went with it.
Many folks in the Red Lodge area have known that JCF Siegfriedt and OHP Shelley were the Fathers of the Beartooth Highway. Some have even recalled a previous effort by Siegfriedt to build a trail up the side of Mount Maurice. But an old article I dug up at the Parmly Billings Library pointed to a single meeting, just as the coal mines began closing in 1924, at which Siegfriedt convinced Shelley and five other men that getting the federal government to build the highway was the way to salvage the city of Red Lodge.
It was like King Arthur gathering knights at the round table to explain their romantic, honorable, and incredibly foolish quest. It’s fascinating in retrospect because despite all odds, the quest succeeded. And that’s the type of story a narrative nonfiction writer loves. The results of what I did with it are not available online, but you can subscribe by starting here or get the book with all the pictures starting here.
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