Glasgow and the Dam That Built a City
Montana
When construction began on Fort Peck Dam in nineteen thirty-three, Glasgow became the supply hub for what would briefly be the largest public works project in American history. At its peak in July of nineteen thirty-six, more than ten thousand workers were on the payroll, and shanty boomtowns with names like Wheeler and New Deal sprang up in the surrounding prairie. Margaret Bourke-White came out to photograph the dam's massive concrete spillway, and her image became the cover of the very first issue of Life magazine on November twenty-third, nineteen thirty-six.
The dam was completed in nineteen forty. Most of the boomtowns vanished or were submerged by the reservoir. Glasgow survived as the regional center it remains today, with a New Deal-era post office mural inside still showing what that extraordinary moment looked like.
