Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge

Lee Metcalf was born in Stevensville in 1911 and served in the House and then the Senate as one of Congress's steadiest voices for public land. From 1961 to 1975 he sat on the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission, which approves the wetlands the federal government buys with the money hunters pay for duck stamps, during the fastest growth the refuge system had seen. He died in January 1978, and that August the Ravalli National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1964 two miles from his hometown and visited by him more than once, was renamed for him.

The refuge covers about 2,800 acres of ponds, marsh, meadow and cottonwood bottom along the east bank of the Bitterroot River. More than two hundred bird species have been recorded here and over a hundred nest; its osprey nests have been watched longer than any others in Montana, and a heron rookery stands in view of the visitor area. Inside the refuge is the Whaley Homestead, the eight-room log house Peter and Hannah Whaley built in 1885 on a Desert Land Act claim.

Wildfowl Lane runs through the refuge for driving or biking, and two short paved trails loop through the wetlands and river woods, usually free of snow by March. The refuge is open every day from sunrise to sunset, with the Bitterroot Range rising across the valley to the west.