Free River:

A stone’s throw southeast of Yellowstone National Park in one of the most remote wilderness areas of the country, the snowmelt from several north-facing slopes perpetually give birth to a rare and beautiful river. From these snowfields the Yellowstone River flows north into the water-filled caldera of Yellowstone Lake—the country’s largest natural freshwater lake above 7,000 feet—before pouring out of the northern end of the lake, crashing through the 1,200-feet deep Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, gushing down through the Yellowstone Plateau, out into Paradise Valley then out across the Great Plains before joining the Missouri River 671 miles from those remote snowfields. If you live here in Livingston or Park County, chances are you already know this.

Either way, the Yellowstone is the longest un-dammed river in the lower 48 states. But it almost wasn’t so. Several times throughout the 20th century the possibility of large-scale, river-changing dams loomed over the Yellowstone River. Eager irrigators proposed a dam at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake within Yellowstone National Park in the early 1900s, and during the drought of the 30s and the hydroelectric heydays of the 50s, 60s and 70s, sustained efforts threatened to dam the Yellowstone River in five different places, four of which are in Park County. Needless to say, all efforts failed, but the story of how and why they failed reveals much about the people who lived and still live near the Yellowstone River, which in turn reveals much about the river itself.

Round 1

The fight over the proposed Yellowstone Lake dam was one of the earliest environmental battles in the United States. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a resource-hungry and resource-wealthy United States moved westward into the frontier. In this expansion, a volcanic, mountainous, and wildlife-filled wilderness in the Northern Rocky Mountains inspired the nation to set it aside as the country’s first national park, Yellowstone National Park. The initial awe this place inspired in the young nation’s citizens soon proved to be the same impetus in people’s opposition to the Yellowstone Lake dam.

Irrigation via dams became a popular concept in the United States as early as the late 19th century. Ferdinand Hayden’s 1870s geologic study in the Yellowstone National Park region helped create the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 1879. In 1888, the USGS began proposing large-scale irrigation projects, one of which encompassed around one million acres of land along the entirety of the Yellowstone River, and other subsequent irrigation projects gave rise to what some felt was the need for a reservoir. The 1902 Reclamation Act gave the U.S. Secretary of the Interior the power to implement irrigation and hydroelectric projects in 17 western states, and projects on many western rivers soon followed.

The prospect of dams brought with it dreams of economic prosperity for burgeoning western towns, and Livingston was no different.

In “The Damming of Yellowstone National Park: A crusade for irrigation in the Upper Yellowstone River Valley,” Hugh Lovin quoted Livingston’s 1919 Chamber of Commerce Secretary Oliver Holmes as saying a dam would “hereby end floods in the ‘defenseless [Yellowstone] valley’” and provide irrigation for 800,000 acres.

Dam proponents soon formed the Yellowstone Irrigation Association and Jerome Locke, publisher of the Livingston Enterprise, became a very vocal secretary for the new group. Locke argued successfully that drought and a national slump in farm prices demanded Montana begin major irrigation projects, starting with Yellowstone Lake.

Locke’s money and recognition helped him launch an efficient campaign, but National Park Service (NPS) director Stephen Mather feared both the environmental and political repercussions of a fight over irrigation between Montana and Idaho. In his opposition, Mather cited the Organic Act, which created the National Park Service and stated the NPS must “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife” and “provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

John Muir’s unsuccessful fight to stop a dam on the Hetch Hetchy near Yosemite National Park brought the issue into the national consciousness, and this helped galvanize opposition to the Yellowstone dam. “The battle…introduced preservationist thought to the American public, created strategies for organizing large-scale public protest, and led to the act that created the NPS,” Lovin writes. “It also instilled in Muir’s supporters a conviction that a national park must never again be sacrificed to commercial interests. The Yellowstone irrigation project was exactly the sort of enterprise they had vowed to stop.”

Dam opponents argued the irrigation project could negatively impact tourism as well as threaten such national icons as Yellowstone National Park’s geysers, paint pots and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Locke fought back and accused his opponents of spewing supposition and propaganda, but his two main reasons for a dam—irrigation and flood control—soon deflated as crop surpluses due to the agricultural depression reduced the need for reclamation and more irrigation and scientific reports revealed the proposed dam would not only offer little flood control but it would also offer a fraction of the irrigation the YIA claimed it would.

Different groups began to discuss alternative dam sites on the Yellowstone River at Yankee Jim Canyon and just south of Livingston, but the great expense of both projects brought dam supporters back to Yellowstone Lake. Still, the prospect of a dam within a national park proved to be more than the public would tolerate. Under Calvin Coolidge’s administration, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work asserted Yellowstone Lake should stay “intact in its natural state.” Subsequent fragmented efforts to revive the Yellowstone Irrigation Association also failed, and though Montana’s governor Elmer Holt fought to dam the Yellowstone River just south of Livingston in 1935 and 1936, the money never materialized and the river remained free-flowing from Yellowstone Lake on down. But this would not be the last time talk of a dam on the Yellowstone River bubbled up in the national dialogue.

Five Dams Too Many

Like the railroad and Yellowstone National Park, the Yellowstone River has always been a major part of Livingston’s and Park County’s collective identities. The river flows through the heart of the county and Livingston is nestled along the river’s “big bend.” Historically, the Crow Indians made their homeland along the entirety of the eastern side of the Yellowstone River, and Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery navigated the river in dugout canoes on their way back east.

In addition to being the original gateway community to Yellowstone National Park, the Yellowstone River’s abundant trout and exceptional fishing have had indelible impacts on Livingston’s identity locally and internationally. The Yellowstone River is a “Blue Ribbon” trout stream. The Fish, Wildlife and Parks classification is determined by an assessment of “fish abundance, fishing pressure, esthetics and ingress.” With healthy populations of rainbow, brown and native Yellowstone Cutthroat trout, the renowned river and plentiful tributary spring creeks bring in fly-fishermen from all over the world.

Dan Bailey was one of the fathers of modern fly fishing in Park County. He opened Dan Bailey’s Fly Shop in 1938, and by the 50s Bailey’s enterprise had helped make Livingston the international fly fishing destination it is today. It is no surprise that Bailey became one of the most vocal opponents to the Bureau of Reclamation’s reinvigorated plans to dam the Yellowstone River for irrigation, energy and flood control beginning in the late 1950s. Between 1902 and 1960, 18 million acres in 17 western states were “reclaimed” along with the creation of 152 storage reservoirs, 110 diversions and 125,000 miles of canals. The temptation of another reservoir on the mighty Yellowstone proved to be more than industry and the Bureau of Reclamation could resist.

The April 3, 1958 issue of the Park County News, announced, “$85,000,000 Absaroka, Yankee Jim Dams Proposed by Sen. Murray, State Delegation. Senator Seeks Aid of Local Folks in Plan…A 892,000 acre-feet reservoir will be created behind the dam; the power plant will have an initial capacity of 50,000 KV…Power made available by the project could well mean the development of important ore deposits in this area and related industrial development…”

As a testament to the river’s role in the community’s identity, the News published this poetic, albeit banal, musing: “To dam or not to dam! That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler to enslave the waters of the roaring river, And by doing so end the floods which rage each year in the lower valleys And create the energy with which to build a budding industry, Or let these waters go their turbulent and ancient way, Bouncing and boiling over rocks and riffles and deep fishing holes And save from inundation lands of fertile means Or suffer the slings and arrows of political fortune in times like these when jobs are hard to come by. Seek wisdom, ye who have the choice to make, Or cast out lots to see which one that you will take.”

Shakespeare aside, the prospect of a dam elicited immediate response from the community, and none were more vocal than Dan Bailey. In a 1959 piece in the Park County News, Bailey wrote, “Recreation is one of the largest industries in Park County. Its value is less tangible than that of other industries which are easily measurable in terms of payroll or gross return. Several years ago the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the value of the upper Yellowstone watershed at twenty-thousand dollars per mile per year for sport fishing…As the length of the Yellowstone as it twists and turns through Park County is about a hundred miles, the annual value of its fishing would be a hundred times twenty-thousand or two million dollars…The two greatest threats to the fishing resource of the Yellowstone at present are: 1) The possibility of large water developments which could mean much more of a detriment than a benefit to recreation. 2) The possibility of losing access to much of our best fishing water as fishing pressure increases…”

Bailey argued the reservoirs, which dam supporters said would provide new recreation, would harm cold water fish like trout while supporting “rough” non-native fish like carp. Bailey said the dams would also produce large mud flats in Paradise Valley during low water. He quoted one fish biologist who even went so far as to say the entire watershed would need to be poisoned, “removing all fish and starting over,” before any reservoir could be established.

Bailey cited the need for healthy tributaries for spawning trout, and he reminded readers, “We should remember that it is stream fishing, not lake fishing, which this area is noted for and which brings trout fishermen from thousands of miles.”

The Bureau of Reclamation’s Yellowstone River Basin study focused on five possible reservoir sites: the Lissa, located two miles downstream from the confluence of the Yellowstone and Bighorn Rivers; Absaroka (Mission), about 16 miles downstream from Livingston; Allen Spur, about two and a half miles upstream from Livingston; Wanigan (Emigrant), about a mile below Emigrant; and Yankee Jim at the canyon 11 miles downstream from Gardiner.

After initial studies, the Bureau dropped several sites from consideration. Because of limited reservoir capacity to avoid flooding Livingston, high costs of right-of-way and construction, the Bureau eliminated the Absaroka site. A dam at Yankee Jim, besides possibly inundating Gardiner and parts of Yellowstone National Park, would have been extremely difficult and expensive to make because of the height, and jagged, loose rock of the canyons walls. The possibilities of leakage and the relocation of the railroad and highway also helped eliminate the Yankee Jim site from consideration. Cost estimates at the Lissa, Wanigan and Allen Spur sites pointed to Allen Spur where the Bureau proposed a dam 380 feet tall with a 250,000 KW power plant.

The dam at Allen Spur would have impounded 4 million acre-feet of water and inundated over 20,000 acres 30 miles up the valley. This raised the hackles on more than just fishermen. The Upper Yellowstone Farm Bureau formally spoke out against the dam on several occasions, and in March of 1963 an official from the Bureau of Reclamation accepted an invitation to attend a Farm Bureau meeting at the Pine Creek Church hall in Paradise Valley. Farm Bureau members grilled the official as to why the study of dam benefits and losses did not include adequate studies to show the economic loss of productive land to ranchers and Park County, to which the official had no ready reply. There is even the local rumor of a rancher walking into a Bureau of Reclamation office with a box of dynamite assuring those in the office he would not hesitate to use the contents of the box on any dam built on the Yellowstone. Whether or not the Montana-style Monkey Wrench Gang tale is true, the story reflects the sentiment of many Park County residents at the time.

Bob Anderson, a Livingston native, spearheaded a very successful campaign against the dam, and the local grassroots opposition to the Allen Spur dam proved to be a formidable force. In 1962, the Park County Commissioners officially came out against the dam. Soon after, the Park County Rod and Gun Club publicly stated their opposition to the dam, citing the unequaled fishery of the Yellowstone River, the negative impacts warmer water temperatures would have on trout, the destruction winter drawdown would wreak on plant and aquatic life, the inundation of many trout spawning areas, and the overall unmanageability of the proposed reservoir.

In August 1959, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit the Madison Valley area, and about 33 million cubic meters of earth slid off a mountain into the Hebgen Lake basin killing 28 people. The earthquake and the fact that a fault line runs through Paradise Valley near Allen Spur made Livingstonians very uneasy about the possibility of an earthquake and also a massive and preventable flood through town.

Dam opponents also had a friend in Fred Martin, publisher of the Park County News. The News covered the story with dedication, and in 1962 Martin even traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with several senators, representatives and others involved with the Bureau of Reclamation to urge them to stop the dam. Upon his return to Livingston he wrote in the News, “Some officials indicated they had been led to believe that there was an overwhelming majority of Park County folks in favor of immediate or early construction of Allen Spur Dam.” Later that month the News ran a full-page map of the proposed Allen Spur dam and reservoir on the cover of the paper. The headline read, “Here’s what Allen Spur Dam Lake Would Cover Up in Paradise Valley—Do You Think You’d Like It?” The image included labeled locations of schools and churches that would have been inundated by the reservoir.

In 1963, the Montana legislature passed the Stream Protection Act, which sought to “to protect and preserve fish and wildlife resources and to maintain streams and rivers in their natural or existing state.” The act required a permit for the construction of any new facility or the operation and maintenance of an existing facility that could affect the natural shape and form of a stream or its tributaries. It signaled a shift among Montanans’ views of their waters, and dam proponents began to fully realize they were up against a stiff, sustained resistance.

In another column in the Park County News, Dan Bailey articulately and pragmatically explained what many Livingston and Park County residents felt.

“Conservation in its highest purpose benefits all and damages none,” Bailey wrote. “A diverted stream which is used to irrigate land may serve as a benefit for land while leaving a dry bed which repels the viewer and holds no promise to the angler…The key to the solution of this particular difference lies in better upstream conservation practices. If all the water which rushes down the stream during the high water period could be spread over the dry period there would be enough for the rancher and the stream too…A large dam on a river benefits some and damages others. To that degree it is not true conservation.”

The effort to dam the Yellowstone River at Allen Spur soon lulled for the rest of the 60s, but it was not long before renewed attempts picked up the torch.

Coal, Bourbon & Water

The energy crisis of the 1970s led to an increased demand for domestic U.S. energy production. The energy industry and federal government produced the Northwestern Power Study and the Montana-Wyoming Aqueduct Study, both of which explored increased coal plants in the neighbor states. Coal plants require huge amounts of water for cooling, and the Yellowstone and Bighorn rivers soon became prospects for sources of water for power plants in the coal-rich region. In the early 70s, the government put a claim on a third of the flow of the Yellowstone River to divert it to coal plants.

Anticipating the resurrection of efforts to dam the Yellowstone at Allen Spur, Jim Posewitz and the environment and information division of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) dug in for another fight over the Yellowstone River. In 1973, Montana changed its water law and passed the Montana Water Use Act with a provision for subdivisions of the government to make reservations of flow for in-stream uses and future diversion uses. Posewitz and the FWP quickly changed their preemptive plan.

“Our strategy changed from fighting the dam site to securing an in-stream flow that would be strong enough and adequate enough to prevent the depletion of the Yellowstone River,” Posewitz explains. “Instead of having three guys…we rounded up enough resources to find 26 people—aquatic biologists, mammal biologists, raptor biologists—the full spectrum of people who study things that rely on the Yellowstone and its riparian areas. We had no idea what that would take from a scientific point of view. We had to learn a lot and learn it quickly.”

In 1978, the FWP filed a claim for 5.5 million acre-feet of water on the Yellowstone River in addition to a full media blitz in support of their cause.

“We mounted a national and statewide information program that the Yellowstone is worth saving,” Posewitz says. “We had movies and a press tour of writers from all sorts of publications—from the Wall Street Journal to Penthouse—from all over the country.”

The campaign even enlisted Glenmore Distillers who had recently developed their “Yellowstone Yellow Mash” bourbon. Trout Unlimited and others convinced the company to put $40,000 in advertising money towards the Yellowstone River campaign. With the money and the bourbon sponsorship, Trout Unlimited took a brigade of writers and photographers to Chico Hot Springs Resort and river guides floated the group down the Yellowstone River.

“We scheduled it in the fall for snow on the mountains and yellow on the cottonwoods, and we nailed it,” Posewitz remembers.

The December 1978 Life magazine printed 10 pages of full color from the trip, and in the very same month the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation granted the FWP water reservation for the Yellowstone River and 67 of its tributaries. And so ended the last serious attempt to put a major dam the Yellowstone River.

What Is & What Would Have Been

The Yellowstone River still flows freely through Yellowstone Lake, through Park County, through Livingston and through eastern Montana to join the Missouri River. Children still attend class at the Suce Creek School, the faithful still gather at the Pine Creek Church, and fishermen still flock to fish the Yellowstone’s main channel, braids and tributary spring creeks.

Dan Bailey’s fly shop is still in business, but Dan’s son John says it would not be so were the Yellowstone dammed.

“We wouldn’t be here,” Bailey bluntly states regarding dam construction. “We wouldn’t have the spring creeks, and if that dam broke there would be no Livingston...The more you know about this thing the more you realize it would have been really bad.”

Bailey cites the 1976 failure of the Teton River dam in Idaho as another reason dam efforts on the Yellowstone failed. Bad economics and planning also played a part, he says.

“When you see a map [of the proposed reservoir] you see the reasons why this never flew,” Bailey says. “It wasn’t this big, pretty lake you could go boating on.”

Bailey also believes other reasons came into play in people’s opposition to the dam.

“As you learn over time, Yellowstone is a magical word and it certainly was at that time. It was the park, the area…It all gets tied together. The other reason for the Yellowstone is it’s the one we saved. It’s the only one, and that makes it special. It starts in a gorgeous high mountain lake in Yellowstone National Park and eventually changes from a cold water fishery to a warm water fishery somewhere around Laurel…It’s still a live, living river.”

Bailey says the Yellowstone’s rare unimpeded nature provides a unique opportunity for science. The Governor’s Upper Yellowstone River Task Force (UYRTF), of which Bailey is the chair, is taking advantage of this opportunity.

Starting in 1997, the UYRTF began to “assess the cumulative effects of bank stabilization, natural, and other channel modification on the physical, biological, and cultural attributes of the upper Yellowstone River.” In August 2003 the UYRTF released 43 consensus-based river management recommendations, one of which stated, “Construction of a flood control dam and impoundment on the main stem of the Yellowstone River should not be considered as a potential management alternative.”

Warren Kellogg, a watershed specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Helena, also believes the Yellowstone River provides a great scientific opportunity.

“The whole idea of the free flowing river is that over the millennium the river has evolved…to reflect that annual rise in water and the decrease in water over the summer and ice flow in the winter, the whole landscape over the millennium,” Kellogg explains. “You put in a dam…it changes that whole evolution of the river just almost over night and as a result the river will respond to that in one way or another.”

Jim Posewitz echoes Kellogg’s statement and says a dam would have caused irreparable damage to what thousands and thousands of years of evolution produced.

“The most significant loss is you would have depleted the river with all this other stuff and altered the natural range of fluctuation,” Posewitz says “The river’s ecosystem is linked to the fact that the river rises and falls both. It’s like breathing. The channel is structured with braids and islands…and all of this creates riffles and diversity in the river that accommodates this wide range of critters and terrestrial organisms. A free-flowing river is allowed to flood and drop and that is over the eons how every critter out there adapted to that rhythm.”

The destruction of a natural system like the Yellowstone River would have certainly been the worst loss, but the economic ramifications to Park County would have likely been bad too.

As Dan Bailey stated in 1959, recreation related to the Yellowstone River is a huge aspect of Livingston’s and Park County’s economies. Tourism dollars generated from fishing and whitewater rafting help more than just fly shops, guides and outfitters. These dollars reverberate throughout the community, from restaurants and motels to art galleries and real estate companies. An UYRTF socioeconomic assessment found, “For those visitors who fished in Park County, more than 60 percent thought that fishing was somewhat positive or very positive for their visitor experiences. For those visitors who experienced the whitewater in their use of the river, more than 70 percent thought the whitewater somewhat positively or very positively affected their visitor experiences. Recreation is indeed an important part of life in the study area. The Montana Board of Outfitters indicated that from 1995 to 2001, nonresident angler days on the Yellowstone River rose from 3,317 to 4,534. Resident angler days rose, too, from 442 to 598. In other surveys, residents, businesses and visitors to Park County all indicated strong interest in and support for river-related recreation, including fishing, rafting, floating and other activities.”

A dam would have changed all of this, which does not even include agriculture and ranching, two major economic forces in Park County. Jerry O’Hair resides over roughly 15,000 acres just south of the Allen Spur canyon area. He is a fourth-generation rancher, but this would have come to a quick halt with the construction of a dam at Allen Spur.

“I’d have had lakefront property, and I suppose I’d be running a marina rather than a ranch,” O’Hair jokes.

There is much truth in O’Hair’s joke, however. A dam at Allen Spur, or on any other part of the Yellowstone River, would have forever changed the river and all those who live along it. How much and exactly what change is hard to say, but the change would have been significant. Livingston kids would no longer be able to carelessly float on inner tubes from the valley into Livingston. A trip up the valley through Allen Spur canyon would be greeted by a towering mass of concrete instead of cottonwoods and the sublime beauty of the Absaroka Mountains. The interruption of the natural course of one of the most magnificent rivers in the country would have likely been the most profound impact.

The Yellowstone River came dangerously close to damming many times, yet while rivers all around it were dammed, the Yellowstone kept its course. Why? Not to denigrate this state’s other amazing rivers, but the Yellowstone is simply a special river. The people who fought the dams fought them because they believed—among other utilitarian reasons—to alter the natural course of this river would be nothing short of immoral. They fought the dams because they—like trout, cranes and crawdads—built their life around the river.

A movement to build a dam on the Yellowstone River now would likely find immovable resistance. This is reassuring to all those who cherish the river, but the Yellowstone River is not without threats. In April 2006, American Rivers classified the Yellowstone as one of America’s most endangered rivers. Mushrooming development along the upper Yellowstone in Paradise Valley “sets the table for massive bank stabilization and flood control projects in the future…which destroy valuable streamside habitat, increase erosion and sedimentation in the river, and give only a false sense of security to people living on the river’s banks,” a statement from American Rivers says.

All is food for thought as this county continues to grow, but in the end, people here can still be very thankful for the river running through their countryside and communities. Richard Hugo said a town needs a river to forgive itself. If this is true, people living along the Yellowstone River should find comfort in the ample forgiveness the river bestows upon them as it eventually makes its way from remote, high mountain wilderness through their towns on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Story and photos by David Nolt.