Missoula’s Parks And Recreation Tackles River Access Challenges

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - On Friday’s KGVO Talk Back show, our guest on City Talk was Morgan Valiant, Associate Director at Missoula Parks and Recreation for Ecosystems Services, who provided information about the ongoing Clark Fork River Recreation and Access Project.

Morgan Valiant Described the ongoing Clark Fork River Access Project

“We are in the midst of implementation of a vision that we've been developing as a community for about a decade to provide a system of sustainable, intuitive river access points and to restore a bunch of unsustainable, damaging access points,” began Valiant.

Valiant said he had something of an epiphany regarding the condition of the river during his morning and evening commutes.

Valiant said he had an 'A-ha' Moment Seeing the Damage to the Clark Fork

“It's, oddly enough, this really came as a bit of an ‘aha’ moment,” he said. “I used to live a little closer to my work, and I'd bike to work every day, and I'd bike the Milwaukee Trail. A couple of years after the removal of the Milltown Dam, I started to notice just a proliferation of user-made trails going down to the river that were destabilizing banks and causing the loss of riparian vegetation, and I decided to start tracking it.”

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Valiant said he was surprised at the sheer number of paths that had been trodden from the trails down to the river.

Valiant Counted 93 Separate Access Points Down to the River

“In essence, over a few years, we realized that there were 93 separate access points and about a mile of the Clark Fork River through downtown,” he said. “So, if you push together all that damaged area, and these just look like cow paths down to the river, with the loss of vegetation, and destabilizing the banks, it was about 630 feet of eroding bank, but it was spread out over a mile.”

Working for the city, Valiant knows the importance of studying the banks of the Clark Fork River over the years.

Valiant said over 18,000 People were Floating the Clark Fork in a Month and a Half

“We also started tracking recreational use patterns and realized that, on average, and the last time we counted, which was in 2018, there was about 18,000 people floating through downtown Missoula in a month and a half during the peak river use season,” he said. “Unfortunately, none of our parks had been designed with the thought that people would want to get in and out of the river in those parks.”

One of the First Phases Completed was the new Riverfront Terrace

Valiant said one of the first phases to be completed in the restoration and access project was the newly constructed Riverfront Terrace by Caras Park.