Missouri River — Upper Missouri Breaks

About

Missouri River, Montana — 1805 Lewis Clark, 2300 mi Longest US. The river reads at USGS gauge 06054500, where the long-term average discharge runs about 9,200 cubic feet per second against a historic flow near 8,500 cfs. This is Class I water, an optimal window of roughly 5,000 to 15,000 cfs, moving the paddler steadily rather than technically. The 149-mile corridor threads Chouteau, Blaine, and Phillips counties, gathering the waters of Arrow Creek, Antelope Creek, and the Judith River as it passes badland breaks and wind-cut sandstone that give the country its name.

Long before the expedition, the Upper Missouri Breaks were shared territory of the Blackfeet, known as the Niitsitapi, the Assiniboine, and the Gros Ventre peoples. The river was the primary highway of the Northern Plains. Buffalo herds numbering in the millions grazed the breaks, and the river's cottonwood galleries provided shelter and fuel. That older economy of the corridor framed everything that came after it.

The Missouri that carries paddlers through the Breaks is a small piece of a very large river. From its headwaters at the Three Forks — the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers in Gallatin County, Montana — the Missouri runs 2,341 miles to meet the Mississippi near St. Louis, draining 529,350 square miles and standing as the longest river in North America. Lewis and Clark reached the Three Forks in late July 1805, identifying and naming each of the three tributaries. The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail follows the Missouri for its full 2,341 miles, and the Breaks hold the most intact stretch of that route.

The corridor was surveyed formally in 1891, when the Missouri River Commission established the navigational and irrigation potential of the Upper Missouri Breaks and defined the 149-mile stretch from Fort Benton to the Judith River confluence. That survey became the baseline for later Fort Peck Dam planning and for the Missouri Breaks Wild & Scenic River study. On October 12, 1976, the Upper Missouri was designated a component of the National Wild & Scenic Rivers System.

Protection deepened in January 2001, when President Clinton designated 377,000 acres of the Upper Missouri Breaks as a National Monument, safeguarding the most intact stretch of the Lewis and Clark Trail and one of the last remaining shortgrass prairie ecosystems in North America. The monument folds together geologic formations, wildlife habitat, designated wilderness, and sites of deep historic significance along the Missouri's banks.

Today the float breaks naturally into three sections, each Class I. Fort Benton to Coal Banks Landing is the historical starting point, running past the white cliffs. Coal Banks to Judith Landing is the most remote reach, moving through badlands and wildlife. Judith Landing to the Fred Robinson Bridge carries paddlers through the Lower Breaks and the lower canyon. Fort Benton-based outfitters, including the Missouri River Canoe Company and Upper Missouri River Guides, run trips along the Lewis and Clark route. The draw is what it has always been: a long corridor where the Plains river still moves through its original channel, scenery and silence largely intact.