A spot of good news from Montana: the Bonner Dam on the Blackfoot River was removed with a minimum of problems. For the first time since at least 1884, that river of literary and cinematic fame is unfettered.

Other dam-removal projects in the Northwest are certainly more ecologically important, but there’s something poetically fitting about the Blackfoot running free again. As Norman Maclean explained, "the river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time." And now it does once more.