Iron works: Local artist to recycle Old Steel Bridge
<p>Jeffrey Funk works with an oxyacetylene cutting torch on Thursday as he does the preparation work to take down the Old Steel Bridge. Two of the floor beams were removed to make room for the crane that will be brought in next week to cut the bridge into roughly 80 pieces. “For its time it was state-of-the-art technology; the bridge only weighs about 28,000 pounds,” Funk said. “It’s like a spider’s web — elegant.”</p>
<p>Jeffrey Funk, a blacksmith/artisan who lives near Echo Lake, lights a cutting torch on Thursday for preparation work to take down the Old Steel Bridge.</p><p></p>
The section of the Old Steel Bridge that has been resting on the Flathead riverbank — overgrown with brush — for the last six years has finally been sold and will be moved in the next couple of weeks.
Pete Skibsrud, the Kalispell man who bought the section after it was taken down and replaced with a new bridge in 2008, recently transferred ownership of the bridge to Jeffrey Funk, a blacksmith/artisan who lives near Echo Lake.
Funk is making preparations to cut the bridge into about 80 pieces that will be put to a wide variety of uses.
Skibsrud was not paid for the bridge, but Funk is obligated to use part of it to make a piece of art for Skibsrud.
“I’m going to make something cool for Pete and maybe something else for the museum” at the Central School in Kalispell, Funk said.
Skibsrud bought the bridge for $15,000 with the intent of putting it to use elsewhere in the Flathead Valley. At one point, there was talk about using it to span the Stillwater River near Flathead Valley Community College, but that and other ideas never came to fruition.
The bridge has been on land managed by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks near the Shady Lane Pond. State officials originally gave Skibsrud six weeks to move it but that deadline was extended.
More recently, Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials insisted that it be moved because of the potential liability it posed as an “attractive nuisance” that people were climbing on.
“I got backed into a corner,” Skibsrud said of his decision to hand the bridge over to Funk, who once made a weather vane for Skibsrud’s father-in-law’s barn in the Deer Lodge area.
Like Skibsrud, Funk has a deep fondness for the bridge that was erected over the Flathead River in 1894.
If the bridge were cut up and sold for scrap, he estimates it would be worth only about $2,500.
“It will cost me double that to take it down, but I think it’s worth saving,” Funk said. “It’s definitely a cost. It’s silly. I just can’t bear to see it scrapped out.”
Funk builds customized gates and does other decorative metal work. In the late 1990s, he dismantled the Kearney Rapids Bridge over the Swan River near Bigfork and put parts of it to different uses.
He said the Old Steel Bridge, like that bridge, was made of wrought iron rather than steel. That type of wrought iron is no longer manufactured, he said, and it is more resistant to corrosion and fatigue than steel.
He figures that the bridge’s laced vertical columns would be a good material to put to use in construction of buildings. Other parts can be used for all kinds of things, such as a historic interpretive kiosk that he’s contemplating for the Fish, Wildlife and Parks properties at the bridge’s old location.
“It’s nostalgic. It’s an important historic item,” Funk said, but he agrees with state officials that it needs to be removed. “It’s a hazard just sitting there.”
Funk estimates it will take several days to disassemble the bridge section, which is 143 feet long, 23 feet tall and 18 feet wide. It weighs 28,500 pounds.
Funk said the area around the bridge will be taped off and he urges people to keep a good distance away while disassembly work is underway.
Skibsrud, he said, deserves a lot of credit for trying his best to re-task the bridge intact. “I’m trying to do the next best thing,” he said.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.