By Jen Clancey STAFF WRITER
Under the floorboards of the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, in tunnels under the city of Bozeman and emerging behind Rocking R Bar is a mysterious character: the Bozeman Creek.
The waterway wasn’t always hidden from view. In the decades after the city’s 1864 founding, development covered and straightened parts of its winding channels into what it is today. Now, citizen advocates and partners in the See Bozeman Creek group plan to protect and improve access to Bozeman’s namesake creek. A June 2 open house at Soroptimist Park downtown shared 11 new ideas for the effort designed by engineers. Public input will shape next steps for project ideas, and by the end of the year, See Bozeman Creek will present viable projects for city commission approval.
Jim Madden is an advocate with See Bozeman Creek and the founder of one of the group’s partners, Mountain Time Arts. Other partners include the City of Bozeman and Downtown Bozeman Association. Madden noted optimism that the creek could become a downtown destination.
“My hope is that it would be an asset that people can really be proud of and drawn to—that when people come to town, they say, ‘Oh, yeah, we gotta go and look at the creek,’ or have a coffee by the creek,” Madden said. Visuals at the event demonstrated how features like parking can make way for nature within downtown Bozeman.
“There’s a lot of parking and a lot of it’s owned by the city,” Madden said, pointing to the city’s public parking lot behind the Eagle. If the city built a second parking garage on the southside, he explained, it’s possible that would lower the need for surface parking, allowing for more natural areas that complement the creek. Creating a multi-block park next to City Hall by using parking lot space, a footbridge over the rail corridor where the creek flows through the Northeast Neighborhood and dedicating public right-of-way for access to the creek, were other ideas presented at the event.
Longtime Bozeman residents like Chad Dokken, believe that projects enhancing and protecting the creek could remind residents of the nature right in their back yards.
“Yellowstone’s an hour and a half away, but you don’t need to drive an hour and a half to interact with nature,” Dokken told EBS. “And if we think that those are the places that we’re supposed to preserve rather than what’s right behind us here, I think that’s gonna be the start of the end.”
This week, Dokken, a standup paddleboarder with the brand Hala, ventured through the culverts of the creek from Bogert Park to Story Mill, catching on what he says is a two-week window when snowmelt makes the creek navigable by small watercraft.
His video of the adventure has garnered over 5,000 likes since he shared it two days ago, and he hopes it brings awareness to what the creek can offer.
“Yellowstone’s an hour and a half away, but you don’t need to drive an hour and a half to interact with nature. And if we think that those are the places that we’re supposed to preserve rather than what’s right behind us here, I think that’s gonna be the start of the end.”
Chad Dokken, Bozeman resident and standup paddle boarder
“I kinda wanted to show this is a navigable creek,” Dokken said. “We can enjoy it. We can recreate on it. It is not just a culvert of water that goes behind the train yard that trash can go into.”
Dokken has paddle-boarded the creek in previous years, too, and he said it’s allowed him to observe pollution, fish populations and notice things like gas leaks under buildings.
He attended the Soroptimist Park open house to learn more about ideas for the creek, where posters displayed designs of possible changes. Inspired by conversations with residents and stakeholders, the ideas are just for community consideration right now, Christopher Marcinkoski, the founder of PORT Urbanism explained. His design team, alongside engineering firm Rio ASE, are planning the project. Above each project design, they posed an open-ended “What if…” to invite attendees to attach sticky notes with their thoughts.
Through meetings, Marcinkoski learned about what matters to residents.
“I think Bozeman’s growth, Bozeman’s relationship to the creek and to water, the importance of nature and the natural environment to the identity of this place—those are all things that came through right off the bat and that we’ve kind of gone back to each time as we’ve worked through the process,” Marcinkoski said.
See Bozeman Creek will hold another open house on the weekend of Sweet Pea Festival, Aug. 7-9, where they will present more specific ideas for the public based on Tuesday’s feedback. Afterward in the fall, the design and engineering team will create final plans and present them to the city commission by the end of the year. Project partners will also research different funding sources to complete the projects.
Dokken, who grew up alongside the East Gallatin River, hopes that the projects can manage pollution along the creek and make it more visible and accessible.
“I think Bozeman Creek is buried, right? And it’s a shame,” Dokken said. “And I think it will be buried, probably, for quite some time unless the community really rallies around it and says, ‘We want a water source through our town.’”
