Canton was a small town in

Broadwater County, Montana Broadwater County is a county in the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,774. Its county seat is Townsend. The county was named for Charles Arthur Broadwater, a noted Montana railroad, real estate, and banking ma ...

, now submerged beneath

Canyon Ferry Lake Canyon Ferry Lake is a reservoir on the Missouri River near Helena, Montana and Townsend, Montana. It is Montana's third largest body of water, covering and of shor(1) It was formed by the building of Canyon Ferry Dam, which was completed in ...

near

Helena, Montana Helena (; ) is the capital city of Montana, United States, and the county seat of Lewis and Clark County. Helena was founded as a gold camp during the Montana gold rush, and established on October 30, 1864. Due to the gold rush, Helena would ...

. The town was flooded when nearby Canyon Ferry Dam, originally built in 1898 to provide electricity for Helena, was replaced by a second, larger dam which began construction in 1949. When this was completed in 1953 the reservoir increased in volume by 50 times and eventually claimed 25 miles of river bottom, the town of Canton and 4,000 acres of farmland. The Canyon Ferry Dam is currently owned and operated by the

Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...

References

*https://web.archive.org/web/20111009170104/http://montanahistorywiki.pbworks.com/w/page/21639585/Canyon%20Ferry%20Dam%20-%20Cemetery%20Island,%20Canton%20Church *http://www.usbr.gov/projects/Facility.jsp?fac_Name=Canyon+Ferry+Dam {{authority control Former populated places in Montana Former populated places in Broadwater County, Montana Submerged settlements in the United States