Historical Marker
Flying High Across the Big Sky
Alberton, Mineral County · Montana
The panel's if has happened. Listed as endangered across the lower forty-eight in 1978 and downgraded to threatened in 1995, the bald eagle came off the federal list in the summer of 2007, and the 1940 law the panel cites still protects it. Montana had about 325 nesting pairs at delisting and an estimated 526 territories by 2009, several times its recovery targets. Across the lower forty-eight, a bird reduced to 417 known nesting pairs in 1963 numbered more than 71,000 pairs in the survey the Interior Department reported in 2021.
Where it stands
47.01232, -114.54289 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Ninemile Remount Depot — 7.8 miThe Forest Service's mule ranch, built because the fires of 1929 ran out of packers.
- Missoula Smokejumper Visitor Center — 22 miThe base of the crews descended from the first two men ever to parachute onto a forest fire.
- Fort Fizzle — 25 miA log barricade built to stop the Nimiipuu in 1877. They climbed the ridge behind it and walked around.
- CSKT Bison Range — 28 miThe herd the tribes saved, the government forced them to sell, and the range they finally got back.