The Old Milk River Bridge and Tampico

The bridge the panel remembers survives on paper: it was recorded for the Historic American Engineering Record as a pin-connected Parker through truss, the type Valley County threw across the Milk River in the homestead boom. Its twin still stands about fifty miles west, at Trafton Park in Malta, then also Valley County: the same Illinois Steel Bridge Company built it the same year. Bypassed in 1953 and later closed, it is the last of five truss bridges the county built in 1911 and 1912, and it was listed on the National Register in December 2025.

What the plaque says

The Old Milk River Bridge and Tampico For over ninety years residents of this area were served by a large steel truss bridge that crossed the Milk River just northeast of here. Built in 1911 by the Illinois Steel Bridge Company of Jacksonville, Illinois. The structure was one of at least six bridges built by the firm in Valley County between 1910 and 1913. This bridge conveyed ranchers and homesteaders living north of the river to the community of Tampico. Established as a water stop on the Great Northern Rail- way's main line in the late 1800's, Tampico boomed with the arrival of hundreds of homesteaders to the area beginning in 1910. At its height about 1917, Tampico boasted a population of over 50 people and a substantial business district. By the early Twenties, the town was located on the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway, a route that was eventually renamed U.S. Highway 2. A 1921 guidebook to the highway stated there were good camping sites along the Milk River on the north side of the road near the old bridge. The old highway still exists as a county road on the northeast side of the railroad tracks.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Peck Theatre — 27 mi
  A movie house the Corps of Engineers threw up in nine months for the dam crews, meant to come down when the dam was done.

More markers nearby

• Liquid Gold — 4.6 mi
• The Ice Ages — 4.6 mi
• Buffalo Country — 5.8 mi
• Old Fort Peck — 26 mi