Vital Passageway for People and Wildlife

This is the river Norman Maclean wrote about in A River Runs Through It in 1976, and by the 1980s it was in trouble: mining, logging and grazing had fouled the water and the trout had crashed. Landowners along it had begun working with their neighbors in the 1970s. In January 1993, after a first meeting sponsored by the Big Blackfoot Chapter of Trout Unlimited, they formalized it as the Blackfoot Challenge. By 2011 about 123,800 acres of the valley were under conservation easements, and native fish, bull trout among them, were coming back.

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

• Many Cultures Forged Strong Communities — steps away
• Homeward Bound on a Risky Shortcut — steps away
• Brave New World — steps away
• Twilight of an Era — steps away