LOVER MISSOURI RIVEP DRAINAGE 



Boundaries: Fort Peck Dam to North Dakota border 



Drainage size: 91,557 square miles 



Main stem length: 168 miles 



Tributaries: Milk, Poplar, Redwater, Big Muddy Creek 



Cities/Towns: Fort Peck, Poplar, Havre, Glasgow, Wolf Point 



Access: U.S. Highway 2, Montana 24 



The lower Missouri River drainage is a land of badlands and 

 fossils, of breaks and coulees, of rolling farmland and windswept 

 plains dotted with glacial potholes that capture snowmelt and 

 serve as oases for cattle and wildlife. Here at the western limit 

 of the northern Great Plains, the Sweetgrass Hills, Bearpaws, and 

 Little Rockies rise like islands from a sea of grass. The final 

 167 miles of the Missouri's journey through Montana begins at the 

 base of Fort Peck Dam, which created the fourth largest fresh 

 water reservoir in the world (Figure 11). A total of 134 miles 

 of the river's journey were lost in 1937 when the Army Corps of 

 Engineers closed the 185-foot high earth-filled dam to form Fort 

 Peck Reservoir. 



From its entry into Montana northwest of Havre to its 

 confluence with the Missouri below the dam, the sluggish, turbid 

 Milk River, life blood of the prairie, meanders for 704 miles 

 (including its short trip through Alberta), providing irrigation 

 for the crops and hayfields of communities like Chinook, Dodson, 

 Malta and Tampico, located along its shady banks. Above the lush 

 Milk River floodplain, is Montana's Hi-Line -- windswept plains 

 dotted with glacial potholes and debris cut by occasional canyons 

 and coulees. It is a treeless country of dry land farming and 

 grazing with the everpresent earthen dams built along the brushy 

 coulees and water courses to trap and hold the winter snow melt 

 and occasional rains. These reservoirs and the prairie potholes 

 along the Canada Border serve as oases both for cattle and 

 wildlife. 



Fisheries 



Although the Hi-Line of northeastern Montana is some of the 

 most arid country in the state, 2,236 miles of stream were 

 assessed for their fisheries value, the highest total mileage of 

 any drainage assessed (Table 51). The miles were within 110 

 reaches, also the lowest number of reaches assessed in the state 

 (Table 52). The average reach length was considerably longer than 

 those found in western Montana partially due to a lack of intense 

 fisheries investigation breaking streams into smaller reaches. 

 Eleven reaches on the Missouri and Milk rivers main stems 

 contributed 25 percent of the mileage, with much of the remainder 

 in long Missouri tributaries, including Porcupine and Big Muddy 



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