The slide that blocked Madison Canyon, dammed the river, and brought terror and tragedy to those at Rock Creek Campground as viewed from the valley side.(U. S. Forest Service)
Working continuously through the day, without provisions for meals, etc., the road repair crews “barbered” a shoo-fly substitute exit road along the steep mountainside parallel to the shore where the road had collapsed into the lake. By 6:00 P. M. they’d completed a passable road. The State Highway Patrol registered the cars as they exited from their entrapment in the Madison Canyon. When all the unencumbered cars had passed through, the bulldozers helped pull those with trailers over the most difficult portions of the substitute road. That night the refugees were welcomed to food and beds in the Montana State College gym in Bozeman.
Within eighteen hours after the initial shock, the last of those trapped by the earthquake in the difficult-to-reach Madison Canyon were on their way to safety. The wounded had been rescued hours before. As George Sime, information guy for the Highway Department and for CD, said,
“That day anyone would have been proud to be a member of the Highway Department.”
The whole operation ran smoothly—it was a tremendous example of government service in the finest tradition—a demonstration of agencies working together to do an important job.
Where the mountain fell—as viewed from helicopter approximately over the site of the buried area right next to Rock Creek Campground.(Montana Power Company)
Nobody held back. They put in all the personnel, and spent all the money needed to get it done.
“When we knew lives were at stake,” Forest Service Region 1 Chief Charles Tebbe said, “We didn’t worry about the cost or what appropriation it would come from. We just went ahead and did the job.” Quinnell, head of the Montana Highway Department, took the same attitude.