Milk River (Alberta–Montana)
watercourse in Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA
The Milk River is a tributary of the Missouri River, 729 miles (1,173 km) long, in the U.S. state of Montana and the Canadian province of Alberta. Rising in the Rocky Mountains, the river drains a sparsely populated, semi-arid watershed of 23,800 square miles (62,000 km2), ending just east of Fort Peck, Montana.
Geography
It is formed in Glacier County in northwestern Montana, 21 miles (34 km) north of Browning, Montana, by the confluence of its South and Middle forks. The 30-mile (48 km) long South Fork and 20-mile (32 km) long Middle Fork both rise in the Rocky Mountains just east of Glacier National Park, in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Much of the water in the North Fork is diverted from the St. Mary River through a canal and inverted siphon.
The main stream flows east-northeast into southern Alberta, where it is joined by the North Fork of the Milk River, from there It flows past the town of Milk River and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, then turns southeast into Montana, running east along the north side of the Sweetgrass Hills, turning south, passing through the Fresno Dam, then east past Havre and along the north side of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. Near Malta, it turns north, then southeast, flowing past Glasgow and joining the Missouri in Valley County, Montana, 5 miles (8 km) downstream from Fort Peck Dam.
The watershed of the river extends into the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the US state of Montana. The watershed of the river covers an area of 61,642 km2 (23,800 mi2).
“Milk River (Alberta–Montana)” enters the record as watercourse in Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Milk, River and Alberta can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q217739. The Library of Congress control number is sh92003338. Authority coordinates are 48.856, -113.020. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Milk River (Alberta–Montana)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.