Swan River Bridge

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

From the record

One of 168 National Register listings published here for Flathead County · listed in 2015 · category: Structure.

Sources: the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. Bridge St., Bigfork, 59911
When was it listed? August 2015
Category. structure
Also known as. Montana's Historic Steel Truss Bridges
Census division. Creston-Bigfork
National Register reference number. 15000484 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

159 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 159 fires within 5 miles of Swan River Bridge between 1992 and 2020, burning about 113 acres in total. 10 started naturally. 4 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	72
Debris and open burning	41
Recreation and ceremony	12
Natural	10
Power generation/transmission/distribution	7
Arson/incendiarism	4
Smoking	4
Misuse of fire by a minor	3
Fireworks	3
Equipment and vehicle use	3

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
7 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	RIPPLING WATERS ROAD
4 September 2001	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	not named
3 September 2009	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	EAST ECHO LAKE
24 September 1994	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	MILE MRK 29 HWY 35
23 September 1994	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	UPPER JEWEL BASIN RD
22 September 1999	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Flathead National Forest	ESTES #3
21 September 2003	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	not named
21 September 1999	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Northwestern Land Office	AERO LANE

Every fire recorded in Flathead County

Storms near this property

18 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Bigfork, the town this property stands in, in 18 storm reports between 1998 and 2020: 9 hail, 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 1 flood. The reports record 1 death and 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Bigfork	1 killed, 1 hurt	no account filed
August 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Bigfork	$50,000	Multiple thunderstorms collided together just south of Flathead Lake and produced a severe gust front that tracked north to the Flathead Valley. Multiple observers reported that the strong winds lasted for up to 15 minutes. Dozens of toppled trees, damaged power poles, transmission and distribution lines were reported from Bigfork up to Columbia Falls from strong winds. Power outages lasted for 24 hours. The golf course in Bigfork reported losing 59 trees, mostly spruce from 20 to 30 feet tall with diameters between 18 inches and 2.5 feet. The restaurant at the golf course lost all their food due to the power outage.
July 2007	Tornado (EF0)	Bigfork	$8,000	The public reported a waterspout on Flathead lake along the Flathead/Lake County line. A sailboat at this location was spun around at least once in a counterclockwise direction and then sank.
July 2011	Hail	Bigfork	$1,000	Trained spotter estimated nickel sized hail, with damage to apples and cherries in an orchard. A truck five miles north of Bigfork received some dents in it's hood.
November 2013	Tornado (EF0)	Bigfork	-	A cold core upper level trough dropped out of British Columbia providing the necessary lift and instability to trigger showers across western Montana early on November 4th. The unstable atmosphere saw a 24 degree difference between Flathead Lake water temperatures(8.9 deg. C) and at 9,665 ft. MSL(700 millibars) -15 deg. C. A convergent boundary set up southwest of Wood's Bay with cool northerly winds coming out of the Flathead Valley and relatively mild southerly winds moving across the lake. This boundary provided the vertical lift to develop the band of graupel and snow showers. A waterspout was spotted by passers-by traveling on MT-83 near mile-marker 24. Viewing the photos and video that Mike and Dana Marchetti took, it appears that there could have been multiple vortices based on darkened shadows in the vicinity of the main vortex. The waterspout remained over Flathead Lake and no damage was reported.
October 2011	Heavy Rain	Bigfork	-	Equipment at Noisy basin reported 0.70 inches of rainfall in 12 hours.
June 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Bigfork	-	The lodge owner in Wood's Bay reported an estimated wind gust to 60 mph about 1 mile east of town on the county line.
June 2020	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
July 2006	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
June 2006	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
June 2006	Flood	Bigfork	-	no account filed
June 2006	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
June 2006	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
August 2006	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
August 2006	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
March 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Bigfork	-	no account filed
June 2002	Hail	Bigfork	-	no account filed
May 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Bigfork	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Flathead County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

4 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Kearney Rapids Bridge	2.0 miles	1994
Swan River Community Hall	3.2 miles	2002
Porter Ranch Barn	7.3 miles	1999
McCarthy-Pederson Farm Historic District	7.7 miles	2006

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 15000484 in Record Group 79.
Flathead County	All 168 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.