Missouri Headwaters

No river begins in a single place - any more than any of us has a single ancestor.  The Missouri River begins on the sides of hundreds of mountains, in small springs, in rocky lakes - a map of which would define the river's enormous watershed. But the river named the Missouri begins in this one special place just north of Three Forks, Montana, where the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson Rivers come together.

From here it flows roughly 2300 miles to where it reaches the Mississippi just north of modern St. Louis. And from there it flows roughly 1200 miles to the Gulf of Mexico (finding river distances, or at least consistent ones, is more difficult than you might imagine). That means this spot is 3500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

There are only three other rivers in the world (The Nile, The Amazon, and the Yangtze) where you can stand on a riverbank farther from the ocean than this. And it's possible to follow the Jefferson River upstream from here another 300 miles to a small spring (Brower's) in the Centennial Mountains west of Yellowstone.

We stayed in Bozeman the previous night, but I drove back to the headwaters early the next morning and scrambled up to Lewis Rock (Lewis made observations from here when he and Clark visited on July 27, 1805).  This provided an incredible overlook of the confluence.

The three forks of the Missouri arrive here meandering across the broad alluvial valley to the south, but then squeeze together and exit through a narrow gap in these limestone cliffs that mark the northern edge of the basin.

I also posted from Three Forks a few years ago (Three Forks 2010).

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