"That bridge was built in 1934 and is part of the history of the Three Affiliated Tribes. It connected the eastern part of the reservation near the town of Elbowoods, N.D., to the western part. It was dismantled in 1953, when the construction of Garrison Dam led to the creation of Lake Sakakawea and the planned flooding of Elbowoods. The bridge then was moved to its current site.

Today, it's an old bridge. In 1934, it was built for cars such as the Ford Model A, which had been in production as recently as three years earlier. And it was built for horse-drawn wagons, of course.

That bridge was a marker in our history. It connected our reservation, which once totaled 13 million acres but which, over the course of the decades, got carved down to our current half-million acres - a gross reduction in reservation land."

Get the Story:
DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: Bridges to the past and the future (The Grand Forks Herald 12/7)

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