Gallatin History Museum
 
I encourage people interested in Bozeman, the Gallatin Valley, and Greater Yellowstone to visit and join the Gallatin History Museum.  Founded in 1977, the Museum moved into the 1911 county jail building in 1979.” Its mission is  :

“To preserve, promote and foster the history of Gallatin County and Southwest Montana….it offers a unique glimpse into the area’s past. In addition to jail cells and a hanging gallows, the museum  maintains displays illustrating histories of people who have called Southwest Montana home.  Permanent exhibits include the history of American Indian tribes in the Gallatin Valley, a model of old Fort Ellis, the infamous Big Horn Gun, historical fashions, and even a porcelain doll that belonged to a girl who came to Bozeman by wagon in 1864.”

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yXeOfTXRuU
 
The museum also boasts a photo archive with more than 25,000 historic images that can be reproduced for a small fee. There is a research library that includes a special Lewis and Clark collection and files on many Gallatin County communities and families. The bookstore has hard-to-find materials dealing with the history of Gallatin County for sale at reasonable prices.”

 
The Gallatin Historical Society’s major publication is the Gallatin History Quarterly.  Issues normally have a theme, The current one, Volume 41, Number 2 “Special Love and Marriage Issue”.  The next issue features irrigation.  My article, “Unsung Benefits of Gallatin Valley Irrigation”, introduces this special issue.  Here is an overview.
 
The Gallatin Valley is a moist and luxurious island in an ocean of arid lands.  Plentiful water is a rare luxury on lands west of the 100th Meridian.  Policies and practices that worked well in the well-watered Midwest failed as homesteaders came west under the 1862 Homestead Act.  Thanks to a vast network of private canals, the Gallatin Valley is an exception.
 
Canals in the Gallatin Valley substantially augment the flows of our numerous spring creeks.  Little of the legitimate hostility toward large scale federal irrigation projects applies to the small, privately built and managed canals in the Gallatin river drainage. 
 
In the Gallatin Valley fishery science, culture, and economics have conjoined and resulted in greatly enhanced appreciation of trout habitat on private lands.  When trout habitat has significant esthetic and economic value, land owners have incentives to protect it.  Naturally, the market responds.  “One of Aquatic Design’s current projects is a $600,000 undertaking …. The end result will be transformation of an irrigation ditch into a trout stream, complete with spawning habitat for Yellowstone River trout.”
 
Here is a clip from fifteen years ago and appreciation for trout waters has grown: “Todd’s project is indicative of demand for private water that has fostered an industry here. More than 10 companies in the region create and restore fish habitat, some are one-person operations, others employ dozens of professionals, engineers, fisheries biologists, geologists, hydrologists, plant biologists and a host of other specialists.”
 
Here is my account, I have fifty years’ experience with the West Gallatin Canal, aka, the Kleinschmidt.  More than a mile of it runs through our family’s Gallatin Gateway ranch.  We have four metered diversions for center pivot and flood irrigation. 
 
Further, a small spring creek arises on our land.  In about 1900 it was destroyed to increase crop land by piping it into Wortman Creek.  I’ve been restoring it over the past 25 years and it now flows through several trout rich ponds. 
 
The spring’s flow dramatically increases a week after the Canal is turned on in May.  It’s clear, 54º water provides excellent West Slope Cutthroat habitat.  Rainbow and Brown trout also spawn in our spring creek.
 
The ranch has a modest guest cabin on Wortman Creek, a few hundred yards north of the West Gallatin Canal.  We occasionally rent the cabin to visitors, most of whom are fly-fishermen visiting Montana.  Several have inquired about the source of the canal water. 
 
I tell them the water comes from six miles upstream to the dam on the Gallatin River.  The dam is near mile post 70 and about 50 yards to the east of U. S. Highway 191, Gallatin Road.  The dam crosses the Gallatin River with the canal head-gate and spill-way and apron on the east side. 

 
Several visitors corrected me, asserting that there is no damn dam on the Gallatin.  “I’ve been fishing the Gallatin for over 20 years and never seen any dam.  You are mistaken.  Good thing too!”
 
I’d like fishers and conservationists in general to reconsider their opposition to all dams, especially the small-scale dams that bless our Gallatin Valley with bountiful water.  Why?  Environmental impacts are time and place specific.   Long experience in the Gallatin Valley shows how our small irrigation dams generate not electricity but rather a host of benefits including ecological and scenic improvements. 
 
 
The volume of 54º F, clear spring water increases by 10-20 times after the West Gallatin Canal is turned on in May.  It changes from its winter trickle to a gusher.  Here is one of the springs pouring out of rocks 75 yards south west of our lambing barn.
 
 
The West Gallatin Canal testifies to the substantial agricultural and wildlife benefits of irrigation in the Gallatin valley.  Samuel Fortier’s 1904 publication, Irrigation in Montana, observed: " The Gallatin Valley is known as a “green oasis” because of the extensive irrigation system (66 canals). There are an estimated 2,000 miles of (irrigation) ditches in the Gallatin Valley which have greatly influenced local agriculture and ecosystems." 

Here is my conclusion: These privately built canals offer good examples of ecological sustainability, responsible liberty, and modest prosperity coming together.