Billings County Commission Puts An End To The “Bridge to Nowhere”

Okay, sing along:

“Ding, dong, the Bridge is dead.

Which old Bridge? The Short Ranch Bridge.

Ding dong, the Short Ranch Bridge is dead . . .”

           That’s the song (with apologies to Judy Garland) we can be singing after this Thursday’s Billings County Commission meeting.

The vote yesterday by Billings County Commissioners to officially kill the proposed Little Missouri Crossing north of Medora ended nearly 20 years of discussion, negotiation, handwringing, check-writing, electioneering, and deep, deep concern for the future of the valley of the Little Missouri State Scenic River in the North Dakota Bad Lands.

Now, the Billings County Auditor will draft a check for $200,000 for the signature of Billings County Commission Chairman Dean Rodne, to help pay some of the legal expenses the family of the late Congressman Don Short incurred in their lengthy battle to stop the building of a bridge on their land and a road leading to, and from, it, which was once described as the path for a thousand trucks a day over the river.

Rodne’s a hero.

He’s a calm, quiet, mostly-retired rancher and businessman who spent his life in the Bad Lands and, a little more than four years ago, in 2020, threw his hat in the ring for the office of Billings County Commissioner against longtime Commissioner Jim Arthaud. He ran a quiet write-in campaign in the June Primary Election and surprised everyone by getting enough votes to get on the ballot in November. Then he really surprised everyone by defeating Arthaud in November by nearly 10 points. There’s little question that Arthaud’s championing of the use of eminent domain to take the land for the bridge and road from the Short family, and Rodne’s opposition to that, was the deciding issue.

And that was the beginning of the end of the Little Missouri River Crossing project. With the bridge’s main champion Arthaud out of the picture, Commission seats got juggled in the next couple of elections, and the courts got involved (a lawsuit by the Short family over the use of eminent domain, and a “Quick Take” action by the county), and then in last fall’s election, with bridge issue and the use of eminent domain dominating coffee-table talk and door-to-door conversations during the campaign season, Rodne was re-elected, along with another bridge opponent, Jim Haag.

At the very first meeting of the new Commission in December, those two voted to end all the litigation and turn the land taken a couple of years ago in the Quick Take process, back over to the Short family. All that remained to put an official end to the project was to legally scuttle that action and reach a financial settlement between the county and the Short family.

            That happened this week.

            On Wednesday, retired Federal Magistrate Karen Klein, who now operates her own private mediation company, drove out to the courthouse in Medora and shuttled back and forth between rooms holding attorneys for the county and the Short family, with County Commissioners and Short family members looking on, and helped them reach an agreement to put an end to the project. All those proceedings were held in “executive session,”  as allowed by law, closed to the public.

And then yesterday, in a regularly scheduled Commission meeting, open to the public, Commissioners Rodne and Haag voted to end the Quick Take process, return the land the county had taken from the Short family nearly two years ago, and pay $200,000 to the Shorts for the legal expenses they had incurred in the court battle since 2023.

That sounds like a lot, but it certainly didn’t make the Short family whole. I’m pretty sure they have spent more than a million dollars on this affair in legal fees and travel expenses during the nearly 20-year fight to keep the county, the bulldozers and the oil tankers off their land. Those of us who love the Bad Lands and the Little Missouri State Scenic River are deep in their debt.

Not only are we lucky they had the financial resources to sustain such a long legal fight, but that they had the HEART to do so. It would have been so easy for Sandy Short and her family to just walk away and let the oil industry rip up another big chunk of the Bad Lands. The family is scattered around the country, and none of them live there right now, although I think that might be about to change. After all of this, there could be no better outcome than summertime and holiday gatherings back at the ranch in the beautiful bottoms of the Little Missouri, of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Congressman Don Short, himself a hero in a similar battle more than 60 years ago, successfully stopping a scheme to build a paved “tourist road” through the Little Missouri River valley, when he served in Congress from 1959-1965,

All that remains now is for the lawyers to notify the judges and their clerks that the two parties have settled their differences and want to drop all the pending litigation. Gone. Over. Dismissed.

I am reminded today of the words of rancher Con Short, Congressmann Short’s son, who spent his entire life on that ranch. He said at a public meeting in Medora in 2012, “We will get that project stopped.” It took a while, but he was right. Con passed away a few years ago, but His wife and kids got the job done this week. He’s smiling today. I wrote about that meeting. You can read about it here.

I do feel badly for the residents of Billings County, though. In the nearly 20 years of this fiasco, their reckless County Commissioners, now booted from office, shelled out millions of their tax dollars on this ill-fated scheme. Last November, when the voters of Billings County went to the county courthouse in Medora to vote, they said “Stop this madness. We don’t need, or want, that bridge.”

And just weeks later, at the next Billings County Commission meeting, Rodne spoke the words we’ve all waited for: “It’s time to end it. That’s enough.”

And this week they did that. So go ahead. Sing along with Dorothy.