Америка Құрама Штаттарындағы Миссури өзенінің ұлы сарсулары

Series of waterfalls in Montana, United States

The Great Falls of the Missouri River are a series of waterfalls on the upper Missouri River in north central Montana in the United States. From upstream to downstream, the five falls along a 10 mile (16 km) segment of the river are:
Black Eagle Falls (26 feet (8 m)) The Great Falls have been described as "spectacular", one of the "scenic wonders of America", and "a major geographic discovery". When the Lewis and Clark Expedition became the first white men to see the falls in 1805, Meriwether Lewis said they were the grandest sight he had beheld thus far in the journey. The Great Falls of the Missouri River were depicted on the territorial seal of the Montana Territory, and later on the state seal of Montana in 1893.

The Mandan Indians knew of cataracts and called them by a descriptive (but not formal) name: Minni Soze Tanka Kun Ya, or "the great falls." The South Piegan Blackfeet, however, had a formal name for Rainbow Falls and called it "Napa's Snarling." No record exists of a Native American name for any of the other four waterfalls. Four of the five waterfalls were given names in 1805 by American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Both Lewis and Clark named Crooked Falls in their journals. "Beautiful Cascade" (now called Rainbow Falls), and "Upper Pitch" (now known as Black Eagle Falls). "Beautiful Cascade" was renamed "Rainbow Falls" in 1872 by Thomas B. Rogers, an engineer with the Great Northern Railway. It is not clear when the falls lost their original name of "Upper Pitch," but they had acquired their modern name by at least 1877.

The Missouri River lies atop the Great Falls Tectonic Zone, an intracontinental shear zone between two geologic provinces of basement rock of the Archean period which form part of the North American continent, the Hearne province and Wyoming province. Approximately 1.5 million years ago, the Missouri River, Yellowstone River and Musselshell River all flowed northward into a terminal lake. During the last glacial period, the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets pushed these lakes and rivers southward. Between 15,000 and 11,000 BCE, the Laurentide Ice Sheet blocked the Missouri River and created Glacial Lake Great Falls. About 13,000 BCE, as the glacier retreated, Glacial Lake Great Falls emptied catastrophically in a glacial lake outburst flood. The Missouri, Yellowstone and Musselshell rivers flowed eastward around the glacial mass, eventually settling into their present courses. The Great Falls themselves formed on a fall line unconformity in the Great Falls Tectonic Zone. The Missouri River settled into a bedrock canyon which lay beneath the clay laid down by Glacial Lake Great Falls. The course of the Missouri in and around the Great Falls has changed very little since then, in comparison to lower regions of the river on the ground moraine that forms much of the upper Great Plains. The Great Falls of the Missouri River formed because the Missouri is flowing over and through the Kootenai Formation, a mostly nonmarine sandstone laid down by rivers, glaciers, and lakes in the past. Some of the Kootenai Formation is marine, however, laid down by shallow seas. The river is eating away at the softer nonmarine sandstone, with the harder rock forming the falls themselves. Until relatively recently (in geologic time) the Missouri River in the area had a much wider channel, but it has now settled into its current course, where it will continue to cut more deeply into the sandstone.

The first human beings to see the Great Falls were Paleo Indians who migrated into the area between 9,500 and 8,270 BCE. The earliest inhabitants of North America entered Montana east of the Continental Divide between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets. The area remained only sparsely inhabited, however. Salish Indians would often hunt bison in the area on a seasonal basis, but no permanent settlements existed near the Great Falls for much of prehistory. Although the discovery of the Great Falls by Native Americans is not recorded, the South Piegan Blackfeet were well acquainted with the Great Falls by the late 18th century, Jefferson sought and won permission and funding for an expedition from Congress in January 1803.
my ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water and advancing a little further I saw the spray arrise above the plain like a column of smoke which would frequently dispear again in an instant caused I presume by the wind which blew pretty hard from the S. W. I did not however loose my direction to this point which soon began to make a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls of the Missouri. I hurryed down the hill which was about 200 feet high and difficult of access, to gaze on this sublimely grand spectacle. immediately at the cascade the river is about 300 yds. wide; about ninety or a hundred yards of this next the Lard. bluff is a smooth even sheet of water falling over a precipice of at least eighty feet, the remaining part of about 200 yards on my right formes the grandest sight I ever beheld, the height of the fall is the same of the other but the irregular and somewhat projecting rocks below receives the water in its passage down and brakes it into a perfect white foam which assumes a thousand forms in a moment sometimes flying up in jets of sparkling foam to the height of fifteen or twenty feet and are scarcely formed before large roling bodies of the same beaten and foaming water is thrown over and conceals them. in short the rocks seem to be most happily fixed to present a sheet of the whitest beaten froath for 200 yards in length and about 80 feet perpendicular. the water after descending strikes against the butment before mentioned or that on which I stand and seems to reverberate and being met by the more impetuous courant they role and swell into half formed billows of great height which rise and again disappear in an instant. this butment of rock defends a handsom little bottom of about three acres which is diversified and agreeably shaded with some cottonwood trees; in the lower extremity of the bottom there is a very thick grove of the same kind of trees which are small, in this wood there are several Indian lodges formed of sticks. from the reflection of the sun on the spray or mist which arrises from these falls there is a beatifull rainbow produced which adds not a little to the beauty of this majestically grand senery. after wrighting this imperfect discription I again viewed the falls and was so much disgusted with the imperfect idea which it conveyed of the scene that I determined to draw my pen across it and begin agin, but then reflected that I could not perhaps succeed better than pening the first impressions of the mind; I wished for the pencil of Salvator Rosa or the pen of Thompson, that I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnificent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man; but this was fruitless and vain. I most sincerely regretted that I had not brought a crimee obscura with me by the assistance of which even I could have hoped to have done better but alas this was also out of my reach; I therefore with the assistance of my pen only indeavoured to traces some of the stronger features of this seen by the assistance of which and my recollection aided by some able pencil I hope still to give to the world some faint idea of an object which at this moment fills me with such pleasure and astonishment, and which of its kind I will venture to ascert is second to but one in the known world. The falls which Lewis had seen were the lowest of the five falls, the Great Falls. Exploring the following day, Lewis discovered Crooked Falls, Rainbow Falls, Colter Falls, and Black Eagle Falls. Mounting a hill near Black Eagle Falls (probably where the town of Black Eagle is today), Lewis saw that the cataracts ended and that another large river joined the Missouri about two and a half miles further upstream. The Lewis and Clark Expedition made a number of discoveries near the Great Falls. On June 13, Silas Goodrich caught numerous Westslope cutthroat trout at the falls, the first time anyone in the expedition had seen these fish, and several samples were preserved which constituted the type specimens for the fish. The trout was subsequently given the scientific name Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi in honor of the expedition leaders. and western meadowlark at the Great Falls. On June 18, while reconnoitering the series of falls on the south side of the Missouri River with a group of five others, William Clark discovered Giant Springs, which he correctly judged to be the largest spring in the world. He was the first white person to see the springs, and the first white person to see the falls from the south side of the Missouri.

Following the return passage of Lewis and Clark in 1805/06 there is no record of any white man visiting the Great Falls of the Missouri until explorer and trapper Jim Bridger reached them in 1822. British explorer Alexander Ross trapped around the Great Falls in 1824. In 1838, a mapping expedition sent by the U. S. federal government and guided by Bridger spent four years in the area. The first permanent settlement near the Great Falls was Fort Benton, established in 1846 about 40 mile (64 km) downstream from the Great Falls. The Great Falls marked the limit of the navigable section of the Missouri River, and the first steamboat arrived at the falls in 1859. Politically, the Great Falls of the Missouri River passed through numerous hands in the 19th century. It was part of the unincorporated frontier until May 30, 1854, when Congress established the Nebraska Territory. Indian attacks on white explorers and settlers dropped significantly after Isaac Stevens negotiated the Treaty of Hellgate in 1855, and white settlement in the area began to occur. The Great Falls were incorporated into the Idaho Territory on March 4, 1863, and then into the Montana Territory on May 28, 1864. He returned in 1883 with surveyors and platted a city (to be named Great Falls) on the south side of the river. The small town of Black Eagle, Montana, derives its name from Black Eagle Falls,

Only one of the waterfalls that comprise the Great Falls of the Missouri River, Crooked Falls, exists in its natural state today. Dams built on the falls beginning in the 1880s have significantly altered and even submerged the five waterfalls. Black Eagle Dam was built in 1890, and half of Black Eagle Falls are now submerged in the reservoir behind the dam. Rainbow Falls was dammed in 1910 when Rainbow Dam was built.

The Great Falls Portage, a National Historic Landmark District designated in 1966, commemorates the route by which Lewis and Clark bypassed the falls. The landmarked areas, including the expedition camps at either end of the portage, are located well above and below the series falls. The Great Falls are also part of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, established by Congress in 1978. The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center was built in 1998 on a cliff overlooking the Missouri River near Crooked Falls. It provides an extensive look into Lewis and Clark's discovery of the Great Falls and their portage around them, as well as exhibits on native peoples of the area. In 1989, the City of Great Falls, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and other public and private bodies established the River's Edge Trail, a 30 mile (48 km) series of paved and unpaved trails that follow the Great Falls as well as the Lewis and Clark Expedition portage route (along with other scenic and historic area of the City of Great Falls and town of Black Eagle).

The first known drawing of the Great Falls was entered by Meriwether Lewis in his diary. The noted Western painter O. C. Seltzer depicted the cataracts in his 1927 work, "Lewis and Clark With Sacajawea at the Great Falls of the Missouri, 1804." The first known photograph of the Great Falls was taken by noted Western photographer James D. Hutton about 1859 or 1860.