The Boulder River is a tributary of the
Jefferson River
The Jefferson River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately long, in the U.S. state of Montana. The Jefferson River and the Madison River form the official beginning of the Missouri at Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three For ...
in southwestern
Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
in the United States.
It rises in the
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...
at the
continental divide
A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...
in the
Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in western
Jefferson County. It flows east and southeast through the mountains past
Boulder
In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive.
In c ...
, then south to join the Jefferson near
Cardwell.
Game fish
Game fish, sport fish or quarry refer to popular fish pursued by recreational anglers, and can be freshwater or saltwater fish. Game fish can be eaten after being caught, or released after capture. Some game fish are also targeted commerciall ...
in the river include
brook
A brook is a small river or natural stream of fresh water. It may also refer to:
Computing
*Brook, a programming language for GPU programming based on C
*Brook+, an explicit data-parallel C compiler
*BrookGPU, a framework for GPGPU programming ...
,
brown
Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...
, and
rainbow
A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...
trout, and
mountain whitefish
The mountain whitefish (''Prosopium williamsoni'') is one of the most widely distributed salmonid fish of western North America. It is found from the Mackenzie River drainage in Northwest Territories, Canada south through western Canada and ...
.
Brown trout are most prevalent in the last , near the mouth, and the other three species are more prevalent in the reach upstream of the town of Boulder.
The lowermost of the river is affected by irrigation withdrawals, and the reach below the community of
Basin is affected by seepage from old mines and tailings.
See also
*
List of rivers of Montana
The following is a partial list of rivers of Montana (U.S. state).
East of Continental Divide
Water in these rivers flows east and south from the Continental Divide of the Americas, also known as the Great Divide, into the Gulf of Mexico via t ...
*
Montana Stream Access Law
The Montana Stream Access Law says that anglers, floaters and other recreationists in Montana have full use of most natural waterways between the high-water marks for fishing and floating, along with swimming and other river or stream-related act ...
References
External links
Southwestern Montana relief mapU.S. Geological Survey stream gauge near Boulder
Rivers of Montana
Bodies of water of Jefferson County, Montana
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