UPPER FLATHEAD RIVER DRAINAGE 



Boundaries: Headwaters to Clark Fork River 



Drainage size: 11,425 square miles 



Tributaries: North, Middle, South forks; Swan, Jocko, Stillwater, 



Whitef ish 



Cities/Towns: Columbia Falls, Kalispell, Poison 



Access: U.S. Highway 2 and 93, Montana 200 



This is a land of grizzly bears and wolves, of Whitewater 

 adventure, cutthroat trout, and wilderness. From the rugged 

 summits of the Mission, Swan, Salish, Whitefish and Flathead 

 mountains to the peaceful backwaters of rivers born in their 

 highest reaches, the Flathead is Montana's purest glacier country 

 (Figure 3). Flathead Lake, at 171 square miles, is the largest 

 natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi and one of the 

 state's most coveted recreational sites. 



Society long ago recognized the need to protect some of the 

 Flathead's outstanding features, and created both the million-acre 

 Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, America's 

 first designated wilderness area. The "Bob" and the contiguous 

 Great Bear Wilderness total 1.7 million acres. Congress also 

 designated the three forks of the Flathead River part of the 

 National Wild and Scenic River System. Because wilderness areas 

 and national parks are exempt from hydropower development, the 

 Montana Rivers Study did not address lands within their 

 boundaries. The upper Flathead River drainage received 

 outstanding ratings anyway. 



Fisheries 



A total of 1,932 miles of streams in 474 reaches were rated in 

 the upper Flathead River drainage, composed of the Middle, South 

 and North forks of the Flathead River, the Whitefish and 

 Stillwater rivers entering above Flathead Lake and the Swan River 

 entering north of Bigfork (Table 19). The drainage held the 

 greatest percentage of Class I stream reaches and stream miles in 

 the state, 35 percent and 20 percent, respectively. The upper 

 Flathead also held 38 percent of the reaches and 20 percent of the 

 miles statewide rated Class II in the habitat and species value 

 (Table 20). These high percentages of Class I and Class II 

 reaches resulted mainly from the presence of the westslope 

 cutthroat trout. 



The history of the westslope cutthroat trout (Sal mo clar ki 

 lewisii ) in Montana began nearly 70,000 years ago during the last 

 ice age when the cutthroat trout reached the interior of western 

 North America from the Pacific Ocean. Two genetically isolated 

 subspecies diverged during this period, the westslope cutthroat in 

 the Clark Fork, Kootenai and upper Missouri drainages, and the 

 Yellowstone cutthroat (Salmo clarki bouvieri) in the Yellowstone 



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