The Route of the Hiawatha is one of those places. Once you've been there, you'll always remember it. And why not! It's scenic beauty is amazing. And the engineering to pull it off is mind-boggling. Covering 15 miles, almost all of it slightly downhill, the rail-to-trail features nine tunnels, the longest of which is nearly 1.7 miles, and seven towering trestles. I've biked it a handful of times and even aired a report about it back in my TV anchor/reporter days. And once you learn about the Hiawatha's history, it's just that much more special.
In the early 1900s, the Milwaukee Road sought to expand its offerings from the upper Midwest to the West Coast. But to get there, it had to scout, develop and build a railroad track. After three years, a decision was made and construction began through the rugged Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border in the Northern Rockies. According to the Route of the Hiawatha's website, the estimated cost of the bold endeavor was $45 million. However, the final price tag turned out to greater than $234 million, plus another $23 million later on to convert it for electric locomotives.
Cross-country service began on July 4, 1909. The following year in 1910, the Big Burn as they called it, scorched some three million acres of forestland. Among its devastation, the wildfire roared across the rail line and destroyed several small mountain towns. One of them, a riotous railroad town along the line was Taft, mockingly named after President Howard Taft. Known for its saloons and brothels, vulgar living and high murder rate, one reporter at the time called it the wickedest city in America. As the flames approached, its residents ignored pleas to evacuate. In the end, the fire killed everyone as it burned the town burned to the ground, never to be replaced. Today, there's only a highway exit sign along Interstate-90.
On the bright side, there were stories of railroad engineers who drove trains loaded with passengers into long tunnels along the Hiawatha, reportedly saving the lives of more than 600 people.
After the fire, Milwaukee made the decision to electrify its lines so workers erected miles and miles of wooden poles parallel to the track to carry nine electric lines. To make a long story short, the Olympic Hiawatha became the last passenger train to roll through the Bitterroots in 1961. Diesel engines later replaced electric trains. The railway company filed for bankruptcy in 1977 and a train crossed its tracks for the final time in 1980, the year I graduated from high school.
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Fast forward to 2021. I'd worked at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for nearly a decade, writing about its volunteer army and lauding efforts in advancing the mission to ensure the future of elk, other wildlife, their habitat and our hunting heritage. But now it was my turn to be an RMEF volunteer and I couldn't wait.
That same year, we distributed a short film called "The Letter." It chronicles the story of two RMEF members who were hunting elk high in the mountains near the Hiawatha Trail. They came across scattered bones and discovered the skull of a bull elk with electric wire tightly wrapped around its antlers and attached to surrounding trees and vegetation. It was evident the poor animal became entangled, couldn't move and eventually died because of starvation and/or a predator attack.
One of the hunters wrote to RMEF headquarters, stating if there ever was a volunteer project that needed to happen, it was along the Hiawatha. Removing that fallen wiring from trees, bushes and the ground would make it easier, let alone less deadly, for elk, deer and other wildlife to move across the landscape. Action soon followed and volunteers hit the slopes above the Hiawatha Trail in 2020, along with our film crews.
When we released the short film with an accompanying feature story in Bugle magazine, year-two of the volunteer garnered more than twice as many volunteers as the first go-round. It also expanded to two days. And I was excited to be there along with my grandson, Kyler.
After meeting at the Taft exit, we drove a couple of coworkers up the mountain to the work site where we received instruction from U.S. Forest Service and RMEF personnel, divided up into work parties and got to work.
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| Kyler looking down into a deep draw |
The terrain was extremely steep and the vegetation thicker than thick. In short, it was hard, hard work but extremely satisfying as we knew we were making a difference. Kyler met a couple of daughters of a coworker and the three of them spent the day together up in the woods, but always within my sight. With my bolt cutters in hand, we hiked, found wire and started pulling and cutting. As the day wore on, I was glad the trees and bushes were thick since that protected us from the sunshine above.
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| A handful of old wires |
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| Photo source: John Hafner |
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| Downed electric pole |
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| Kyler with an old insulator |
As we worked, an RMEF film crew and another from Danner Boots, an RMEF partner, captured photos, video footage and did some interviews. One of the crews grabbed Kyler and me to chat, which became part of a short film called "The Affect." After lunch and a couple more hours of work, we headed for home so Kyler could get back for golf practice.
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| Accumulated wire & the elk skull |
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| Screen shot from "The Affect" |
One month later, I again made plans to attend the Hiawatha wire pull. Kyler was unavailable so I invited a friend (Dennis Normand). We had a good time together. Once again, it was steep, the vegetation was thick and there was more than enough work to do. At one point, I saw some wires still attached to posts high above the ground. I used some tall branches to pull down several of the wires. I got ahold of another wire and it held me as I bounced in the air but we just couldn't reach others that were still taut. That's bad news because they'll eventually fall and become a danger for animals below.
Unlike the year before, our 2022 work crew made its own interesting discovery. We found out about it at lunch and hiked there afterwards. That's where one of our RMEF volunteer teams came across another scattering of bones with a bull elk skull's antlers entangled in wire. It looked like it died tethered to a small tree and surrounding vegetation. I took a series of photos, one of which appeared in Bugle magazine.
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| Another pickup bed full of wire removed off the landscape |
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| Photo source: John Hafner |
