Monday, February 9, 2026

BNSF/Milwaukee Sage Creek Trestle and Sage Creek Tunnel near Danvers, MT

Trestle: (Archived Bridge Hunter; Bridge Hunter; no Historic Bridges; Satellite)
Tunnel: (Satellite)

Davonte Pagac posted
Reaching back a long time, Dad would have been about 5 years old when the Milwaukee Rail came through Danvers.  They had to build a trestle over several streams, one of the longest/tallest being over Sage Creek, which was pretty much in Dad's back yard.  Additionally, they had to dig a tunnel between Danvers and Hoosac.  He remembered going to the work camp in the evening, where a number of folks from the community would gather up all of the uneaten pies and food that the camp had left over, which sounded like it was substantial.  Must have been quite an operation to construct all of that.  I came across this picture on a site called smokstak.com, (I'm sure Gary is familiar with it), of the trestle being built. The caption states: "This is a great photo I own of the construction of the steel trestle over Sage Creek in Montana's Judith Basin, on the Milwaukee Railroad's new line from Lewistown to Great Falls in 1913. There is a locomotive providing steam as well as a donkey engine up high on the equipment providing winch lines for erecting the pillars onto the concrete pads below."  Kind of a neat picture.
Rob Biggs: Google maps has a pretty good shot of the tressel, you can see each concrete pillar it sits on, and the shadow of the tressel shows on the ground. How long was the tunnel!?? I fpund ot on Google Maps as well, It looks like its a long one, maybe 1,500 feet or more??

2014 photo by Nathan Morton via BridgeHunter

Dennis DeBruler commented on Rob's comment
Found it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hmLLqnUXvQpFPjcZ8
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I easily found the trestle and tunnel with this map.
1954/67 Lewistown Quad @ 250,000

When I noticed that the route still has tracks, I checked if BNSF owns this route. It does. I traced the route on Google Maps from Judith Gap through Danvers to the trestle and tunnel.
BNSF


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