TWIN BUTTES - The reservoir of Lake Sakakawea took so much from so many.

This winter it gave something back.

The permanent flood of Garrison Dam covered beloved and rich bottomland on the Missouri River and eight communities on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

As the water slowly crept up, it flooded a towering concrete monument to the old 4 Bears Bridge, which was built to finally provide crossing from one side of the reservation and the river to the other.

The bridge connected the reservation and old Highway 8 to Elbowoods on the other side.

The monument - dedicated during a marvelous three-day celebration opening the bridge June 14-17, 1934 - was last seen decades ago.

While the water was rising, children swam around the monument like sleek otters, grasping its slippery sides and using it to catch a breath and push off again.

One unrecorded, unknown day, probably sometime in the early '60s, the water slipped over the top of the monument. It disappeared, like so much else. The reservation lost 176,000 acres, precious timber, homes, ranches and towns to the flood of Garrison Dam.

The monument, unimportant in and of itself, seems to symbolize all that loss.

Several days ago, folks from Twin Buttes were down on the lake, ice fishing and looking around.

They were struck by the sight of an object protruding through the ice. They knew immediately what they were seeing.

After all these years, the tip of the concrete oblique still comes to a point sharp enough to pierce the heart.

Lyndon Fredericks said the sight of it again after so many years brings quiet to the onlooker.

The monument was built when times were in some ways as good as they got on the reservation.

The people had good land for farming and ranching on the river bottom, where cattle were as fat in the winter as during any lush feasting on summer grass.

No one knew in 1934 when dignitaries came from all over to celebrate the new bridge that it would be dismantled in 20 years.

A new plan called Pick-Sloan ordered construction of six dams on the river to prevent catastrophic flooding downstream.

Land was taken up and down the river to make room for the big water impoundments.

Life was changing. The 4 Bears Bridge was dismantled in June of 1953. It was rebuilt into a longer span to cross the new lake at New Town.

Marilyn Hudson is director of the tribal museum at New Town.

She said the monument has historical significance, especially to people who remember seeing it when they crossed the bridge.

It was not moved when the water was rising and she thinks it's unlikely that it would or could be moved now.

Besides stirring memories, the monument will be a yardstick of the water level in the lake, she said.

The lake level now is around 1,808 feet elevation, lower than it's ever been since it was flooded in the first place.

The Missouri River was down the hill and below the monument, probably another 60 feet or so in elevation.

Hudson said people are anxious to have a look and see if they can pick out familiar landmarks: where the road was, where the bridge must have been, where 4 Bears hill used to be.

She guesses the monument must have sustained damage after all these years in a watery grave.

Fredericks said the guys ran a reading and figure the monument is in 3 feet of ice and water. The rest of the 12-foot oblique and tiered concrete platform would be mired in silt and mud.

John Fredericks, of Twin Buttes, remembers driving cattle across the bridge and said it provided an agricultural and social connection for his people.

He drove out to have a look Wednesday, the passenger in a four-wheel drive rig that made easy work of the rugged hills and the glare ice that have to be crossed to reach it.

"It's remarkable," John Fredericks said.

That it is - a remarkable reminder of long ago times when the government could give people on the reservation a bridge with one hand and take it away with another in the blink of time's eye.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)