Broadwater County Residents Take a Stand
 | Author:
Nancy Marks, Reporter
Nancy Marks: MT43 News Secretary and News Editor |
Broadwater County Residents Take a Stand With Changes to Highway 287 Nancy Marks Reporter From here on out Broadwater County residents and officials want a seat at the table before Montana Department of Transportation (MDOT/MDT) makes plans for Highway 287.
Townsend Hardware owner and City Council mayoral candidate JB Howick summed up the discussion. “We want the highway department to work with us on the major expansion of Highway 287, not the other way around,” he said.
City Council member Vickie Rauser echoed Howick’s point. “We need the department’s future expansion plans and what our options are before the plans are put in place,” she said.
Broadwater County commissioners hosted MDOT representatives Dave Cunningham, district construction engineer, and Jeff Harrison, construction operations engineer, both out of the Butte district office. They came to the May 23 meeting in Townsend to inform the public about upcoming work on Highway 287 which runs almost the full length of Broadwater County. They were unable to answer most of the residents’ questions. Their boss, William Fogarty, Butte district manager, was unable to attend.
Several of the about 25 people who attended the meeting voiced various concerns about the lack of public input as to the location of the new rest area at the Three Forks Junction, no turning lanes at dangerous intersections all along Highway 287 where subdivisions are located and what the future holds for the City of Townsend’s as well as the Missouri River Bridge’s two-lane highways.
Howick pointed out MDT policies and procedures show a pattern of leaving out the people who live here. “We had to scramble to stop the highway chipseal work which was planned by the Fairgrounds during Rodeo Week, one of the most attended events in our year. We didn’t even know about it until we saw the equipment set up,” he said.
Second was the long-standing question about the Three Forks rest area. Members of the audience insisted the public has been left out of the decision-making process about building the rest area, including not having public meetings as to its location, and whether the construction job would be awarded at a public meeting. Wheatland Meadows resident Butch Barton listed the various meetings beginning in April 2017 when South Dakota developer Craig Rickert purchased land in Bozeman near the rest area on 19th Avenue. In December 2019 Rickert presented plans to the Montana Highway Commission to relocate the Bozeman rest area to the Three Forks Junction.
Wheatland Meadows resident Paul Finlayson said several citizens had attended the MDOT Open House in July 2021. “We were told by (District Manager) Bill Fogarty that we could ask questions about the planned rest area, that all our questions would be answered. What we found out that day was the location was already a done deal,” Finlayson said.
The Wheatland Meadows group assembled a 1,300-signature letter asking the governor to stop the building plans which “went nowhere”, he said.
Another concern voiced at the meeting was the lack of safe turning lanes all along Highway 287. The speed limit at the rest area entrance drops from 70 miles per hour to 45, so entering and exiting the rest area is next to impossible, especially for big four wheelers, one person pointed out. Commissioner Darrell Folkvord noted traffic is now backing up exiting from Interstate 90 to Highway 287. “Won’t the trucks and cars build up on the Interstate when they try to get to the rest stop?” he asked.
One woman at the meeting pleaded with the managers to rethink the turnout lanes for big trucks trying to turn into the rest area. “There are no turning lanes for the rest stop or Wheatland Meadows Road, so big trucks traveling at 70 miles per hour leave no room for people trying to enter or exit the highway. I want my children and my neighbors to get home safely at night, not get run over at the stop sign,” she said.
A Winston area resident asked MDOT to schedule a public meeting about turnoffs in the Beaver Creek area where there are seven different approaches to the highway and not one turning lane. Bob Brassey of Winston pointed out the danger of no right-turn lane for traffic traveling west onto Spokane Creek Road.
Silos resident Al Christopherson asked about including a pedestrian trail from Indian Creek campground to the Silos area, which would include a pedestrian bridge attached to the Missouri River bridge.
Toston residents asked about the status of ownership of the old Toston Bridge. Both Harrison and Cunningham promised they would take people’s questions back to the design department and the district manager to get answers.
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PhotoCredit: Nancy Marks
Image 1 Caption: New Rest Area on Hwy 287 at Wheatland
