By Josh Margolis
HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – Various Havre area stakeholders gathered at the Hill County Courthouse last Friday to discuss potential plans to improve recreation in Havre on and along the Milk River.
Attendees of the meeting included Commissioners Jake Strissel and Mark Peterson, Sammy Chagnon of Havre Trails, Havre Chamber Executive Director Julea Robbins, and Paul Tuss and Susan Brurud of Bear Paw Development.
The meeting lasted an hour and 15 minutes and was essentially a brainstorming session, with speakers throwing out ideas for ways to boost tourism along the Milk River.
Three of the most heralded ideas were placing an official walking trail along the levee and increasing and improving access for floaters and kayakers.
“It’s very hard to float the Milk River because people don’t know where they can come in and come out. But if we could identify those and have parking there, I mean the potential for tourism in our area to come in, be able to float, be able to walk,” Brurud said. “You’ve got the buffalo jump you come by, potentially we could have some accessibility there were even floaters could come out and stop and be able to access the buffalo jump from there.”
One issue with floating the Milk River is that there is a weir used to extract water for the municipal plant on the west side of Havre that is not safe to float through. So along with increased access on the river, a portage trail across the weir was another idea that was tossed around.
Other ideas included allowing public fishing access on Smitty’s Pond, building bathrooms and camping sites along the river, and creating a sculpture garden.
“(Land owners) own part of Smitty’s Pond and the County owns part of it. (The owners) would like to make this into a fishing pond for public use. So that’s part of what we’re kind of looking at also. So if that was made into a public fishing area, then there might be some access that’s open to parking,” Peterson said. “Fish and Game have already said if we can get something worked out, they would consider dredging this. They have funds to do so to make this into a better public fishing area. But there’s a lot of things that have to come together before the Fish and Game gets to that point of being involved.”
The US Army Corps of Engineers has expressed support of placing a walking trail alongside the Levee. The Montana Silver Jackets have already provided the County with two informational signs that could be placed along the trail.
“Something that we don’t talk about a lot or enough…is the people who have died due to flooding in this area. We look at it just as a cost of flood insurance,” Brurud said. “We have numbers that we can’t release yet, but there is significant loss of life for not getting the levee certified. So the hope is, getting the walking trail going, even (just a) portion, before or soon or in align with out community engagement, will help build some (understanding).”
The trail would likely be created in several phases, with the first phase covering the area south of the river from 7th Avenue to the buffalo jump.
One issue is ensuring parking near the trails. The County is hoping that they can get cooperation from BNSF or local land owners to find a place near the levee for parking.
These ideas will continue to be ironed out and will be discussed at the public meeting concerning the levee on September 21st at 7 PM at the Chuckwagon at the Fairgrounds.
From there, planning groups could be created with members of the public to continue discussing the potential for increased floating and hiking in the area.
Some of the ideas could be put into action within the coming months, while others may take years.
Hill County and Bear Paw Development are working on putting together an application for an EDA planning grant in order to obtain funding to move forward with the ideas.
“There’s no question that there needs to be a lot of planning done. That’s where the vision was that we’d have different committees that would take different segments and that would be kind of there project to work on. But there would have to be an oversee of some source of funding for planning just to get to that point,” Peterson said.
