page_title: Sawtooth National Forest
section_title: Waterways
hierarchical_section_title: Sawtooth National Forest / Geography and geology / Waterways
caption_attribution_description: English: Iron Creek in Sawtooth National Recreation Area Custer County, Idaho
context_page_description: Sawtooth National Forest is a National Forest that covers 2,110,408 acres in the U.S. states of Idaho and Utah. Managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it was originally named the Sawtooth Forest Reserve in a proclamation issued by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, 1905. On August 22, 1972 a portion of the forest was designated as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, which includes the Sawtooth, Cecil D. Andrus–White Clouds, and Hemingway–Boulders wilderness areas. The forest is managed as four units: the SNRA and the Fairfield, Ketchum, and Minidoka Ranger Districts.
  Sawtooth National Forest is named for the Sawtooth Mountains, which traverse part of the SNRA. The forest also contains the Albion, Black Pine, Boise, Boulder, Pioneer, Raft River, Smoky, Soldier, Sublett, and White Cloud mountain ranges, as well as Hyndman Peak, the ninth-highest point in Idaho at 12,009 feet above sea level. Sawtooth National Forest contains land cover types which include sagebrush steppe, spruce-fir forests, alpine tundra, and over 1,100 lakes and 3,500 miles of rivers and streams.
context_section_description: There are over 1,100 lakes covering 7,600 acres (11.9 sq mi; 30.8 km²) and an estimated 7,500 miles (12,100 km) of temporary and permanent streams and rivers in the forest. Over 680 miles (1,095 km) of streams are found in the Fairfield District, over 500 miles (800 km) in the Ketchum District, and over 450 miles (725 km) in the Minidoka District. The entire northern portion of the forest is in the watershed of the Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia River. The Salmon River's headwaters are in the upper Sawtooth Valley, and this river drains much of the SNRA and follows a tortuous, overall northwesterly course before flowing into the Snake River 425 mi (685 km) downstream. The eastern side of the Sawtooth Mountains is drained by the South Fork of the Payette River. The northern Soldier Mountains, southern Smoky Mountains, and much of the Fairfield District are drained by the South Fork of the Boise River, which flows into Anderson Ranch Reservoir just west of the forest. The Ketchum District, part of the SNRA, and the southern slopes of the Fairfield District are drained by the Big Wood River. Much of the Minidoka District is also drained by the Snake River via the Raft River and other tributaries, but portions of the Black Pine and Raft River Mountains drain into the Great Salt Lake. The annual water yield from the forest is estimated just below 2,300,000 acre foot (2.8×10⁹ m³).
  Most of the forest's lakes are the result of glaciation and occur in the SNRA in the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains, but lakes can be found in most of the other mountain ranges of the forest. There are over 20 lakes in the Fairfield District, 90 in the Ketchum District, and 6 lakes and 3 reservoirs in the Minidoka District. The largest lake on the forest is Redfish Lake, a moraine-dammed lake that is 4.5 mi (7.2 km) long, 0.72 mi (1.16 km) wide, and up to 387 ft (118 m) deep. Other large lakes include Alturas, Pettit, Sawtooth, Stanley, and Yellow Belly lakes.
caption: Iron Creek in the Sawtooth Mountains
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