Armstead: The Town That Sleeps Under the Reservoir

Somewhere beneath the surface of Clark Canyon Reservoir lies the town of Armstead, Montana. Named for miner Harry Armstead, the community was founded in nineteen oh seven as a railroad stop on the Union Pacific line from Idaho Falls to Butte. It also served as the eastern terminus of the Gilmore and Pittsburgh Railroad, a short line that ran into the mountains of Idaho until nineteen thirty-nine.

By the early nineteen sixties Armstead was still a small living community when the decision was made to build Clark Canyon Dam. The dam went up between nineteen sixty-one and nineteen sixty-four, and the rising reservoir slowly covered the town. On dry years, when water levels drop, fragments of the old highway, bits of railroad grade, and even foundation stones surface from the silt, a ghost town revealed not by abandonment but by water.