{"id":3530,"slug":"fort-peck-fort-peck-montana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["On September 22, 1938, at 1:15 in the afternoon, the upstream slope of the nearly finished Fort Peck Dam let go. One hundred eighty men were working in the slide zone. Thirty-four were injured. Eight were killed — and six of them were never found. They are still inside the dam, somewhere under the millions of cubic yards of earth the slide carried with them.","It was the deadliest day of the largest public works project of the New Deal — a dam so vast that the first cover of Life magazine, in November 1936, was Margaret Bourke-White's photograph of its spillway. Ten thousand people had come to the boomtowns around it — Wheeler, Square Deal, New Deal — shantytowns named for hope, built to hold the men who were rebuilding a river.","The dam was finished in 1940, creating Fort Peck Lake — the fifth-largest reservoir in America. Sixty-one men died building it. At the 75th anniversary, their names were read aloud, all fifty-nine they could find, and carved into boulders at the lookout. The six in the slide have no graves — the dam itself is the grave."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Fort Peck is the archive's buried-men file — a dam that holds its own dead, a boomtown that rose and vanished in seven years, a cover of Life magazine on a hole in the ground. The documented engineering is the record; the six men in the dam are the lore of a project that cost more than the war it was meant to outlast.","A dam that holds its builders keeps them — the file's suggestion being that the six unnamed graves are the true foundation of Fort Peck."]}],"name":"Fort Peck","aliases":[],"type":"TOWN","type_label":"Town","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","INDUSTRIAL","NEW_DEAL"],"groups":["hauntings","legends"],"desc":"The 1933 dam town—where the boom died but the dam stayed.","full_desc":"Fort Peck is a town in Fort Peck, Montana. The 1933 dam town—where the boom died but the dam stayed. HauntHunt files it with industry, the New Deal and local folklore. Its accounts name only a collective — the dam workers. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. It is a living community — be a respectful visitor.","address":null,"city":"Fort Peck","county":null,"state":"Montana","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":48.00705,"lon":-106.455199,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"MTWY batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":3868,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"The workers are reportedly seen. The accounts name only a collective — the dam workers. Fort Peck, Montana is a living community with a dead file — the reports are the town's other history. 'Fort Peck' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. 'Fort Peck' carries the account. The name gives the haunting a face, and the sightings give the name a job.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The dam workers","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Fort Peck","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":3869,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures in the town. A Montana town's lore is municipal property; Fort Peck keeps this account in its unofficial archive. Witness accounts, no evidence file: the claim is anecdotal and stays that way. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting. The telling survives; the proof stays folklore.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Fort Peck","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The 1933 dam is documented. A Montana community's documented history gives the file real ground underneath the local lore. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The detail is preserved in 'Fort Peck'. The record keeps it — history, not lore. The claim holds its place in the ledger.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1933","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Fort Peck","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The workers are reportedly seen. A Montana town's lore is municipal property; Fort Peck keeps this account in its unofficial archive. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The account appears in 'Fort Peck'. The retelling is the record now — the legend metabolized the facts long ago.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Fort Peck","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The dam workers","claimed_identity":"The dam workers","verified":null,"summary":"The workers are reportedly seen. The lore files them collectively as the dam workers. The town in Fort Peck, Montana has its documented history and then it has this — the account everyone locally knows. The report is preserved in sources like 'Fort Peck'. The file keeps The dam workers on the roster; the sightings keep the name alive.","behavior":"The workers are reportedly seen.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Fort Peck","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Public townsite; walkable areas are generally accessible year-round.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Fort Peck","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Fort Peck, Montana","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck%2C_Montana","desc":"Town in Montana, United States","extract":"Fort Peck is a town in Valley County, Montana, United States. The population was 239 at the 2020 census.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Valley_County_Montana_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_Fort_Peck_Highlighted.svg/960px-Valley_County_Montana_Incorporated_and_Unincorporated_areas_Fort_Peck_Highlighted.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":86,"lat":48.00694444,"lon":-106.45527778},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}