Hungry Horse Dam is located on the South Fork of the Flathead River about four miles south of Martin City, Montana, on West Side Road. Built between 1948 and 1953, the concrete arch dam is 564 feet high with a crest of 2115 feet. It has a base width of up to 320 feet and a crest width of 34 feet. Combined, the four Francis turbines have a total rating of 428 million Watts. To keep inflows from overtopping the dam, a glory hole spillway is located near the right abutment, keeping the reservoir elevation at or below 3560 feet. The spillway drop is 490 feet.
When we visited in May 2021, the visitor center was still closed for the winter.
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| View from the Scenic Overlook on West Side Road (NF-895) |
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| Visitor Center |
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| Information sign at the Visitor Center |
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| View from the Visitor Center |
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| View downstream of the South Fork of the Flathead River |
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| Gantry crane |
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| Looking down at the powerhouse |
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| Another view downstream |
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| Looking back at the visitor center |
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| Picnic table with a view of the reservoir |
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| Alpha Creek |
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| From this perspective, the arch of the dam is most obvious |
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| Alpha Creek flows into the reservoir |
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| An unnamed island below mountains of the Flathead Range |
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| Glory hole spillway |
There is no fee to visit the dam or enter the surrounding Flathead National Forest.
The Hungry Horse Dam website is https://www.usbr.gov/pn/hungryhorse/index.html.
The Flathead National Forest website is https://www.fs.usda.gov/flathead.
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