Blackfoot River Corridor
VITAL PASSAGEWAY FOR PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE
The Blackfoot River swirls, races and meanders 132 miles from the Continental Divide to its confluence with the Clark Fork River. The river has long served as a vital passageway for people and wildlife alike.
As you travel through the corridor, notice the rumpled valleys and pothole lakes - marks of a great ice age that once held this land in its grip. Today, these potholes and adjacent marshes attract osprey, great blue heron and Canada geese. Bald eagles nest in treetops above the river as native trout hide in its pools.
Thanks largely to area ranchers that help manage the valley floor, the biological diversity of the corridor has been preserved. The history of its human diversity has been preserved as well. You can still hear tales of the late 1800s when the woods rang with crosscut saws felling trees for railroad ties and mine shafts. In spring, a wall of logs raced down-river to the sawmill at Bonner until the mid-1920s when a railroad took over the job of transporting logs.
Today, canoes and rafts float past the sites of old Indian camps. Anglers cast their lines into clear pools. Bull elk bugle from the ridges. Past and present merge in the rhythm of the Blackfoot as the river flows like lifeblood through the corridor.
BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE:
WORKING TO CONSERVE THE VALLEY
Conserving the natural beauty and rural lifestyle is more than a vision for the Blackfoot Challenge. This "grass roots" group of private landowners,: agencies and local officials formed in 1993. Together, they work on many fronts, from restoring streams, conserving water, improving grazing, and controlling weeds to educating others about land stewardship.
From the historical marker