An Open Letter to the Montana Department of Transportation and the Citizens of Carter County:

Ten white crosses visibly line the 36 miles of Highway 7 between Ekalaka and Baker. Five are between mile markers 25 and 18, and five are between mile markers 13 and 1. I’m told the actual number of crosses should be double and the historical number of deaths may be triple that. Those crosses represent family members, friends, and neighbors with names like Ehret, Emswiler, and now, Wahl. No one may know the actual number of deaths that have occurred on that highway. What is known is that we could line the entire length of that highway with crosses that represent the near deaths, the injured, the damaged, and the harmed victims of car wrecks that have occurred on that same stretch of road. Those injured would include my parents, close relatives, classmates, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors - all hurt on a stretch of road that really has not changed much since it was originally paved to Baker. In fact, I don’t remember the foundation, width, and shoulders of Highway 7 changing at all from Ekalaka to mile marker 18 in my now over 50+-year lifetime. It’s basically the same narrow highway we used to transport grain to Rhame, ND in the 1940’s through 70’s and cattle to Belle Fourche and St. Onge, SD in the 1960’s until the present. It’s virtually the same narrow highway which we’ve used daily to travel to school, to go to work, to obtain medical care, to attend sport tournaments and music concerts, and to go to church, family gatherings, weddings and funerals.

In Carter County, we have been the object of ridiculing humor for many years when it comes to our highways. We were the town you could drive into but had to back out of. We were the town at the end of the road near the end of the world. At the time of those jokes, I would listen to a now ex-relative in Helena braying about how it would be a cold day in hell before he would ever allow highway money to finish 323. I would talk to my neighbor and friend, Conrad Burns about paving Highway 323. I would talk to my boss, Ron Marlenee, and my former co-worker, Melodee Baucus, and my friend, Denny Rehberg about how we could get that highway finished. And, all the while, while all of us were driving in other surrounding states, we were driving on nice, flat, open, wide, safe (and, apparently, affordable), highways in areas just as rural as ours. As the joke goes, Montana makes jokes while North Dakota builds highways.

When hell finally froze over and my ex-relative died, our county received federal assistance to finish 323, MDOT begrudgingly paved the road on a crumbling foundation. When the state finally widened Highway 7 in the year Stef and I were married at Mehlings’ lodge, the work impacted the entire highway, but the improvements stopped near mile marker 18. Why? Was the northern part of the highway used so much more than the southern half? Was the northern half more dangerous? Seems as if the number of citizens killed on Highway 7 is the same on both sides of mile marker 18. Seems as if most people using the road use all of the same road. Seems as if the same commerce used the entire length of highway. What was the rationale for bringing the northern half of the highway into the 21st century while leaving the southern half at least a century behind?

I’m empathetic for the bureaucrats and civil servants who are responsible for using limited funds to cover a lot of miles of road in Montana. But, my empathy has limits, especially when I drive around highways to nowhere in the mountain passes around Helena and Missoula. MDOT has been chip sealing, and tar and papering, and repainting and otherwise putting lipstick on this pig of a highway for year after year. And, in the meantime, the quoted cost of making Highway 7 and Highway 323 safe, foundationally-sound, sufficiently wide highways has quickly escalated from $500,000 to $2 million / mile. And, quoted costs have become so outrageous, that it now seems as if it’s more cost effective for the state to pay for the rare successful wrongful or negligent death action than it is to pay for a mile of decent highway.

So, MDOT, if not now, when? You tell our legislators we need to wait for “our turn.” Are you going to make the road correctly when it’s $4 million a mile - $5 million a mile - $10 million a mile? And, as I watch the ARPA and CARES and COVID and INFRASTRUCTURE money begin to pour into every crack and crevice in the nation, I ask, again, MDOT, if not now, when? Because if everyone has to wait for “our turn” and our turn hasn’t happened in my lifetime yet, and if it doesn’t happen when the federal money is pouring into every corner of the country, and the costs are increasing, when exactly is “our turn” going to occur?

The petition that was created by the Carter County Commissioners was created to unify the citizens of Carter County with those of other surrounding counties whose loved ones are placed at risk by Highway 7 on a daily basis. Its purpose is to remind those in power who provides them with that power with the loyalty of their votes. Its purpose is to demonstrate that Carter County is willing to direct its resources (around half of a million dollars in 5 years) as a match which DOT can use as a match with federal assistance to correctly repair the highway pursuant to a law that was drafted by the Montana legislature for exactly that purpose. Its purpose is to warn MDOT that planned developments in pipelines, wind turbines, and businesses are going to be vastly impaired by the substandard narrow highway. And, its purpose is to act as a document that shows when the next citizen dies in a car wreck on Highway 7, Carter County took every reasonable action within its power to try to prevent that death.

I urge all Carter County citizens and the citizens in the surrounding counties to sign the petition before March 15. I applaud the citizens who have already written to our legislators and Governor to express their outrage and sorrow after the recent death of one of our own. I respectfully urge MDOT and those state leaders with the influence and the power to repair and maintain our highways to make them foundationally sound, adequately wide, and safe before another cross is placed beside Highway 7.

Corbit Harrington

Carter County Attorney