"The dam is just part of Bigfork," Bigfork Chamber of Commerce President Rebekah King said back in June. "It's the Wild Mile. It's Sliter's Park. It's the nature trail. I think we've just sat here naively, not reckoning the impact PacifiCorp has on the community."
She said that the week PacifiCorp first told the world it wanted out of the dam business here. Three months later, the story has moved from a website FAQ to actual paperwork. PacifiCorp confirmed this week that it received multiple proposals to take over the Bigfork Hydroelectric Project before its September 4 request-for-interest deadline. Spokesperson Drew Marine told the Bigfork Eagle the company expects to take some time reviewing those proposals before entering discussions with one or more parties, and that a final outcome likely won't surface until early 2027.
That's the news. What it means is where most of the conversation around town has gotten tangled, because the two fears people keep repeating out loud, that the Wild Mile disappears and that Bigfork Bay dries up, aren't actually the parts of this story that hold up under scrutiny. The part that does hold up, and that almost nobody is asking about directly, is who ends up holding the deed to 277 acres of shoreline, trail and parkland that the town has treated as its own for more than a century without ever actually owning it.
A Dam Older Than the Town's First Streetlight
The Bigfork Hydroelectric Project predates Bigfork as an incorporated idea, if not quite as a place. Everit L. Sliter platted the townsite in 1901. Lafayette Tinkel and his son Frank had already filed a water right on the Swan River the year before, and Tinkel's crew hand-dug a canal that carried water more than a mile through a wooden flume to a powerhouse on the south bank. By 1902, the plant was producing electricity, making Bigfork current a year after it existed on paper. Electric Avenue, the street that still anchors downtown, is named for the power lines that once ran above it.
PacifiCorp has run the project since 1954. Today it's a 12-foot-high, 300-foot-long concrete diversion dam with a 235-foot spillway, still turning 1900s-era turbine and generator sets to produce 4.15 megawatts. It's a run-of-river facility, meaning it diverts water into a bypassed channel and returns it downstream rather than backing up a reservoir behind it. That distinction matters more than almost anything else in this story, and it's the reason the most common resident fear doesn't survive contact with a hydrologist.
Why the Rapids Probably Don't Disappear
Ryan Richardson, a Whitefish-based fluvial geomorphologist who has paddled the Wild Mile for more than a decade, laid it out for the Flathead Beacon this July. The rapids exist because of gradient, the natural drop in elevation just below the dam, not because of anything the dam itself creates. Remove the diversion structure and the Class IV whitewater that's hosted the Bigfork Whitewater Festival for more than 50 years doesn't vanish. Richardson's read is that a longer season becomes more likely, not less, since boaters would no longer be waiting on the controlled release windows the current federal license requires, which run 5 to 9 p.m. only in July and August, and only when natural flows clear 800 cubic feet per second by 8 a.m. that morning.
The bay fear falls apart on the same logic. Bigfork Bay's water level is set by Flathead Lake's elevation, full stop. Richardson told the Beacon there's no mechanism by which removing the dam changes that, because the water diverted through the flume rejoins the river well before it reaches the bay. The hydrology only changes within the mile-long stretch between the dam and where the flume returns the water, the section paddlers call the Wild Mile itself.
So the rapids probably hold. The bay probably holds. What doesn't have an obvious answer is what happens to the ground on either side of the river.
The Land Is the Part Nobody Has Pinned Down
The request for interest PacifiCorp sent out covers not just the license to run the dam but 277 acres around it, land that currently includes:
- Sliter Park, the county-managed green space at the base of the dam where the Whitewater Festival and the Riverbend Concert Series have both been staged for decades
- The 2.5-mile Swan River Nature Trail, with public trailheads at the end of Grand Avenue and at Swan River Road near the bridge
- Powerhouse Park and Pacific Park, smaller recreation sites along the same corridor
- The Kearney Rapids Boat Launch, the access point for the Wild Mile itself
PacifiCorp says the current recreation and access conditions built into its federal license would carry over to a new operator who takes over that license. What's genuinely unclear is what happens to that land if no buyer wants the license at all, and PacifiCorp moves toward decommissioning instead. American Rivers dam removal specialist Rachel Schmidt, who's based in the Flathead Valley, told the Beacon that a full decommissioning is itself a slow, multi-year process requiring a feasibility assessment, a stakeholder support review and sign-off from the dam's owner before FERC even gets involved. Nothing here happens on a short clock. But a slow process still ends somewhere, and right now nobody outside PacifiCorp knows where.
Two Different Clocks, and Only One Requires the Public
Part of the confusion in town comes from residents treating the sale process and a possible future decommissioning as the same conversation. They aren't.
| Stage | What's happening | Public comment required? |
|---|---|---|
| Request for interest (closed Sept. 4, 2026) | PacifiCorp solicited buyers for the license and land | No, Marine has said this is a private business decision |
| Sale negotiation (now through early 2027) | PacifiCorp reviews proposals, enters talks with one or more parties | No |
| Decommissioning (only if no sale happens) | PacifiCorp works through FERC to retire the license | Yes, FERC opens a formal comment period |
Marine has been direct about this distinction more than once, telling the Eagle in June that "if we haven't found a buyer, of course we will be sure then that the public has a chance to come out." Right now, the process underway is the one where the public doesn't have a formal seat. That doesn't mean residents have no voice, only that the moment for a structured, official one hasn't arrived yet, and won't unless the sale falls through.
Nobody Is Actually at the Negotiating Table
Here's the wrinkle that makes Bigfork's version of this story different from a typical utility divestiture. Bigfork has no city government. It's unincorporated, and it straddles Flathead and Lake counties, each with its own commissioners and planning board and neither with any formal mechanism for coordinating with the other on a decision that affects the same square mile of riverfront.
That absence showed up in a concrete way this spring. Flathead County had managed Sliter Park under a lease for 45 years. In May 2026, the county commission voted not to renew it, citing budget constraints. Whatever the reasoning, the practical effect is that one of the few institutional actors with a long track record of stewarding that land stepped back from the table months before PacifiCorp's own sale process even reached its deadline.
Into that gap have stepped two community groups rather than any elected body. Megan Shoultz, president of the Community Foundation for a Better Bigfork, has been the most consistent public voice on what the town stands to lose, telling reporters that the festival and the bay "feel like the heart of Bigfork" and that seeing them changed would be heartbreaking for a lot of people, herself included. Ashley Atkins helped form the Bigfork Community Alliance partly in response to how the announcement itself was handled, with no public meeting and no formal notice beyond an FAQ posted to a company website. Flathead Electric Cooperative, the valley's public utility, has said only that it's monitoring the situation and reviewing whether the dam might make sense to acquire, calling out the safety, licensing and long-term liability obligations that come with any hydroelectric facility as reasons it isn't rushing a decision.
What's Actually True Right Now
Nothing about daily use of the river or the park has changed. The current license terms still govern flows, and PacifiCorp has said it will keep operating the project as it has, on the same terms, through however long this sale process takes. If the license conditions hold, next year's whitewater festival runs under the same rules as this year's 51st installment. The nature trail is still open. The boat launch still works the way it always has.
What's different is that the town now knows, with more certainty than it had in June, that there's real buyer interest in a piece of infrastructure that quietly built the place it lives in. What it doesn't know, and won't for months, is who that buyer might be, whether they intend to keep the license and the land together, or what any of it means for a stretch of riverfront that has functioned as public space for a century without a single deed making that official.
If you're watching this play out because you care about what happens to the river corridor, or because you're weighing what a piece of land near the Swan River might be worth once this settles, Montana Property Brokers keeps an eye on exactly this kind of local shift. Ask to be added to their off-market list and we'll fold updates on the dam sale in with the properties, since one is likely to shape the other before 2027 is over.
