DEER LODGE — The fieldwork in 1891 showed it does not take long to kill a river.

The bulletin from the U.S. Fish Commission painted a grim portrait of what was then called the Deer Lodge River and flows now as the Clark Fork. The researchers found a creekbed rife with a “shifting mass of fine silt” linked to mining and smelting activities upstream and believed fatal to aquatic life.

“We seined the river very thoroughly in the vicinity of Deer Lodge and did not find any fish whatsoever,” the report observed.

It takes a whole lot longer to bring a river back.

Remediation of mining and smelting wastes long bedeviling the Clark Fork River and related restoration of natural resources began in 2010. Current projections suggest the work will continue until at least 2038 on the 47 river miles

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