page_title: Little Blackfoot River
section_title: Water usage
hierarchical_section_title: Little Blackfoot River / Water usage
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing the Little Blackfoot River in Montana in the United States, along with tributary rivers and streams that form its watershed. Areas which are part of the Helena National Forest are shown in light green.
context_page_description: The Little Blackfoot River is a 48-mile long tributary of the Clark Fork River, located in Powell County, Montana in the state of Montana in the United States.
context_section_description: Irrigation of ranchland to produce hay for cattle is the predominant use of the Little Blackfoot River. There are somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 distinct prior-appropriation water rights on the Little Blackfoot River, although an exact accounting of how much water is taken annually is not known.
  Mining was common in the Elliston area from about 1860 into the late 20th century, and has had some detrimental impact on the river. There are an estimated 100 abandoned mines in the upper Little Blackfoot River watershed (headwaters to Dog Creek), and another 100 abandoned mines on the lower reaches of the stream. At least 20 inactive or abandoned mines were identified by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality in 1995 as capable of having a significant potential impact on the watershed, and 15 of these are considered to be of high concern. Only seven of the sites had been reclaimed by November 2014. Three mining claims (American Gulch Placer, Ophir Placer, and the Carpenter Creek gold ore dredge) are currently active in the watershed.
  Logging also occurred in the Little Blackfoot River watershed in the 1970s and 1980s, but has not been actively pursued since except on a very minimal, personal-use scale.
caption: Map showing the Little Blackfoot River and its watershed.
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