The Wall is a narrow 12,200-acre strip touching 15 miles of the north shore. Cottonwoods parallel the river with the rugged, dissected face of The Wall appearing as an almost vertical mat of prairie grasses and sagebrush. Sheltered coulees hide tiny pockets of juniper and pine, with teepee rings on the bluffs overlooking an old homestead. Heavily eroded open clay slopes plummet from sharp, barren ridges. The long, thin 4,800-acre Stafford WSA extends for 9 miles directly across the river from Dog Creek.
Flat ridges drop almost vertically with soils too loose to support vegetation.
The more moderate slopes are covered with grasses, sagebrush, and greasewood. The east boundary is an old wagon road once used to salvage a grounded steamboat. Here the rugged, deeply dissected terrain and scattered but dense pockets of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir offer outstanding solitude. Colorful geological formations are matched by an equally colorful history. The country was likely traversed by Chief Joseph's Nez Perce in their attempted 1877 escape to Canada.