Visiting the Miracle of America Museum was one of the highlights of our visit to Montana. This is a huge museum and the outside displays you can see without charge, if you want to tour the indoor displays the admission is nominal.
Gil & Joanne Mangels founded the Miracle of America Museum in 1981 and are still passionate about it today. The day we were there Gil was as eager as ever to answer all our questions and provided us with a map of the different displays.
This logging tow boat was built in 1926 at Somers boat yard on the north end of Flathead Lake. It was named after Paul Bunyan, the legendary logger who was bigger and stronger than ordinary men because this boat was so much bigger and stronger than the smaller steam tows which were then in use.
Floating logs were encircled by chained together boundary logs. The resulting raft or boom was then towed to a lumber mill, either the Somers Lumber Co. or Dewey Lumber Co. at Polson.
The boat was powered by a 6 cyl. 10 1/2 inch bore Fairbanks 180 horsepower crude oil engine. Unfortunately the engine was dynamited for scrap before we purchased it.
Newer roads and more powerful trucks phased out towboat logging by 1951.
The Paul Bunyan is a 65 foot logging tow boat located at the Miracle of America Museum. You can explore this 50 ton vessel, even climb aboard and take the helm to experience how it was when this mighty tow boat floated up and down the Flathead Lake.
From Miracle of America Museum