Butte Field Office
| Contacts: | David Abrams 406-533-7617 |
Holter Lake Boat Dock To Close For Upgrades
Waterfront facilities at the Bureau of Land Management’s popular Holter Lake Recreation Area will undergo extensive upgrades in the coming months which will improve access and safety for the public.
The Holter Lake boat ramp, dock and day-use parking lot will close for the season on Aug. 3 as a construction crew begins a 90-day renovation which includes replacing and expanding the docks, building new asphalt walkways, and upgrading the existing boat ramp. The project will ultimately provide 44 overnight dock slips (12 of them new), an improved anchoring system, and a three-lane concrete boat ramp with nearby courtesy docks.
During construction, the campground sites and associated facilities will remain open.
The recreation area was built in 1972 and sees more than 65,000 visitors each year. With such heavy use, the boat dock is starting to show its age, said Bradley Rixford, Supervisory Outdoor Recreation Planner with the BLM’s Butte Field Office. “The existing ramp and docks do not meet handicap requirements and present serious safety hazards due to iron fatigue from wave actions, warped and rotten boards, pontoon deterioration/leakage, steep gangways, inadequate bumpers and unstable concrete slabs under the water,” he said. “The time has come to give this boat ramp and dock facilities a serious facelift.”
The planned start date for the project, which comes before the end of the summer recreation season, was chosen due to the length of the work, the contractor’s schedule and the approaching winter months.
“We purposely delayed closing the ramp as long as we could,” Rixford explained. “Given the unpredictable Montana weather, we worked backwards three months from the beginning of November as our end date and that is why we are forced to close the ramp in early August.”
Boaters are reminded that BLM’s other boat ramp at Log Gulch, about three miles southeast of the Holter Lake Recreation Area, will remain open to the end of the season and can be used as an alternative launch. The Log Gulch boat ramp and docks are scheduled for upgrades next year, a project which was postponed so that both popular sites would not be closed at the same time.
“Overall, we are going to greatly improve the boating experience on Holter Lake,” Rixford said. “Visitors will enjoy better, safer and more accessible boat facilities when this upgrade project is done.”
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, recreational and other activities on BLM-managed land contributed more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 600,000 American jobs. The Bureau is also one of a handful of agencies that collects more revenue than it spends. In FY 2012, nearly $5.7 billion will be generated on lands managed by the BLM, which operates on a $1.1 billion budget. The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.
Butte Field Office 106 N. Parkmont Butte, MT 59702