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MEMORY L ANE
Text by Suzanne Waring
ometimes those in authority receive the
credit rather than those who actually do
the work. Founder of Great Falls, Paris Gibson,
had lived in Minneapolis and had likely visited
Salt Lake City. He had observed those cities'
well-planned streets. From those experiences
he decided that Great Falls should also have
boulevards and wide streets. He hired H. P.
Rolfe and Robert Vaughn to survey and to
lay out the city, but it was le to George W.
Bird who was hired to join the Great Falls city
engineer's department to do the work.
George W. Bird
Photo Courtesy of Richard Bird Baker
George W. Bird
Great Falls Pioneer
Photo Courtesy of History Museum
Mr. and Mrs. Bird and Edda taken in 1901
Lile is known of Bird's childhood except that
he was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in
1861. His mother died when he was nine years
old, and his father remarried. A census states
that he aended four years of college and at age
nineteen worked as a drasman. "He then went
west to Fargo, North Dakota," said his great
grandson, Richard Bird Baker, of Great Falls.
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