In Jefferson Valley, Montana, not far from Three Forks, I enjoyed the examination of numerous beaver workings, and made measurements of the most interesting system of beaver canals that I have ever seen. The beaver house for which these canals did service was situated on the south bank of the river, about three feet above the summer level of the water and about two hundred feet north of the hilly edge of the valley. From the river a crescent-shaped canal, about thirty-five feet in length, had been dug halfway around the base of the house. Connected with this was a basin for winter food; this was five feet deep and thirty-five feet in diameter. From this a canal extended southward two hundred and seven feet. One hundred and ten feet distant from the house was a boulder that was about ten feet in diameter. This was imbedded in about two feet of soil. Around this boulder the canal made a detour, and then resumed its comparatively straight line southward.
Over the greater portion of its length this canal was four feet wide, and at no point was it narrower than three feet. Its average depth was twenty-eight inches. For one hundred and forty-seven feet it ran through an approximately level stretch of the valley, and seepage filled it with water. A low, semi-circular dam, about fifty feet in length, crossed it at the one hundred and forty-seven-foot mark, and served to catch and run seepage water into it, and also to act as a wall across the canal to hold the water. The most southerly sixty feet of this canal on the edge of the foothills ran uphill, and was about four feet deep at the upper end, four feet higher than the end by the house. The dam across it was supplemented by a wall forty-eight feet further on. This wall was simply a short dam across the canal, in a part that was inclined, and plainly for the purpose of retaining water in the canal. The upper part of the canal was filled with water by a streamlet from off the slope. Apparently this canal was old, for there was growing on its banks near the house, a spruce tree, four inches in diameter, that had grown since the canal was made.
[Illustration: Beaver Colony on Jefferson River near Three Forks, Montana]
The wall or small dam which beaver build across canals that are inclined represents an interesting phase of beaver development. That these walls are built for the purpose of retaining water in the canal appears certain. They are most numerous in canals of steepest incline, though rarely less than twenty feet apart. I have not seen a wall in an almost dead-level canal, except it was there for the purpose of raising the height of the water. This wall or buttress is after all but a dam, and like most dams it is built for the purpose of raising and maintaining the level of water.