The Gallatin River: Headwaters Fishery and the Madison Arm
Near Bozeman, Montana
The Gallatin River rises inside Yellowstone National Park and flows northwest through one of the most scenic canyon corridors in the northern Rockies before entering the broad valley that bears its name. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark named the river in eighteen oh five for Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson. The upper Gallatin, cold, clear, and fed by snowmelt, is a blue-ribbon trout stream supporting wild rainbow and brown trout populations that draw fly fishers from around the world. It joins the Jefferson and Madison rivers near Three Forks, about thirty miles west of Bozeman, to form the Missouri River, one of the longest rivers in North America.
