Souvenirs of the Ice Ages

The kettle ponds the glaciers left made this stretch of the Blackfoot a small prairie pothole country set among mountains, and it is managed as one. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps waterfowl production areas here, among them the Blackfoot, Kleinschmidt and Upsata Lake tracts, run from a field office at Helmville, and holds perpetual easements on tens of thousands of acres of private ranchland whose owners agree not to drain or plow. In spring and summer the ponds draw trumpeter swans, common loons, red-necked and eared grebes and Barrow's goldeneyes.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Big Blackfoot Railroad — 0.5 mi
• The Bob Marshall Wilderness Country — 16 mi
• Madison Limestone and the Garnet Mountains — 21 mi