Old Missoula

Completion of Lolo Pass Road Talked At Meet

Route Has Priority Status In Next Appropriation Of Federal Funds.

Present status of the Lewis and Clark highway through Lolo pass west along the Lochsa and ways and means of expediting its completion were discussed at a meeting at Boise, attended by Major Evan Kelley, regional forester, last week.

This highway route has been incorporated as a strategic road needed for military purposes, information being received from Washington, D. C., to the effect that it is on the Class 2 priority program. This will result in money being made available for its completion as soon as such funds are provided.

Completion of the survey of a 10-mile stretch through the Black canyon is now being pushed by the Public Roads administration. Engineers are encountering difficult obstacles in the work due to the roughness of the terrain, the survey being projected from the opposite side of the river canyon by means of triangulation in some sections. The Public Roads administration indicated its desire to complete the survey and continue the routing of the highway next year. The road is now finished as far as Powell ranger station on this side, while a Federal convict camp is working on the west side at the mouth of Black canyon.

Major Kelley was among the advisers present at a meeting of representatives of the Idaho state planning board, which is submitting recommendations for a plan of management for state owned forest and grazing, as well as farm lands, in response to a request from the Idaho state land board.

The above article appeared in the Sunday Missoulian on November 17, 1940.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/352493066

Completion of this Highway was officially celebrated in Missoula on August 19, 1962. An article in The Missoulian that day noted that even then the Highway would not really be finished until a recent $1.2 million “rebuilding” contract was done. Unauthorized Autos were actually using the unfinished Highway in the late summer of 1959.

Senator Albert Gore gave the dedicatory address at the ceremony in Missoula. Retired Clearwater Forest supervisor, Ralph Space, gave a capsule history of the area. Space was the author of an extensive history of the Clearwater River area which is available on the internet at the following link:

https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/THE-CLEARWATER-STORY.pdf

The 1962 Missoulian article is at the link below:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349457628/