Chester Confluence Ranch

Two rivers meet here. The Fall River falls out of the southwest corner of Yellowstone, runs sixty-four± miles through timber and farm country, and gives itself up to the Henry’s Fork at Chester. Chester Confluence Ranch holds the ground where that happens.

The Henry’s Fork needs no introduction to anyone who fishes. What is worth knowing is how this particular water behaves. The river swings through a long bend along the property, and the volume the Fall River adds changes its character below the meeting point. Riffles and deep runs replace the slower flats upstream. Rainbows share the water with heavy browns. Boats come off the river at the Chester launch and go back in below the dam for the run down toward St. Anthony, which makes this one of the better-known stretches on the lower river.

The dam carries its own history. The Bureau of Reclamation built the Chester diversion in 1938 to serve irrigators in the valley. In 2014, Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative brought it online as a hydroelectric facility, and a fish ladder funded by the Henry’s Fork Foundation, Trout Unlimited, and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition opened upstream passage for the first time since the structure went in. Trout now move as far up as Ashton and into the Fall River itself.

Back from the river, two large ponds hold ducks and geese through the fall. Trumpeter swans work the open water in the cold months. Sandhill cranes feed the wet ground in the shoulder seasons. The Chester Wetlands unit of the Sand Creek Wildlife Management Area covers 762± acres of wetland along this same stretch of the Henry’s Fork, and the birds pay no attention to property lines. Moose browse the willow bottoms. Whitetail hold in the cottonwoods.

Two hundred twenty-four± acres. Two rivers. One of the best addresses in eastern Idaho.