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 ...

, now submerged beneath Canyon Ferry Lake near

Helena, Montana Helena (; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Montana and the county seat, seat of Lewis and Clark County, Montana, Lewis and Clark County. Helena was founded as a gold camp during the Montana gold ...

. 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, formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it ...

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 places in the United States