Twilight of an Era

The flood came the year the dam was finished. Its gates closed on January 5, 1908, and that June the highest water on record carried waste from the mines and smelters upstream down the Clark Fork and dropped it behind the new dam, more than six million cubic yards laced with arsenic and heavy metals. In 1981 the county health department found arsenic in Milltown's wells, and in 1983 the reservoir went on the Superfund list. On March 28, 2008, hundreds watched the river cut through the last of the dam, and the two rivers met without it again.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• A Carousel for Missoula — 5.3 mi
  A cabinetmaker's promise to the city council: give it a home, and he would carve the horses.
• Fort Missoula — 8.7 mi
  An 1877 Army post that held Italian seamen and Japanese immigrant men behind its fence in World War II.
• Missoula Smokejumper Visitor Center — 10 mi
  The base of the crews descended from the first two men ever to parachute onto a forest fire.
• Travelers' Rest State Park — 13 mi
  The one Lewis and Clark campsite with proof in the ground: hearths, gun lead and a latrine still laced with mercury.

More markers nearby

• Brave New World — steps away
• Many Cultures Forged Strong Communities — steps away
• Homeward Bound on a Risky Shortcut — steps away
• The Lolo Trail — 12 mi