The Marias River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 210 mi (338 km) long, in the U.S. state of Montana. It is formed in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Glacier County, in northwestern Montana, by the confluence of the Cut Bank Creek and the Two Medicine River. It flows east, through Lake Elwell, formed by the Tiber Dam, then southeast, receiving the Teton River at Loma, 2 mi. (3.2 km) above its confluence with the Missouri.
The river was explored in 1805 by the Lewis and Clark expedition, who mistook it for the main branch of the Missouri until their subsequent discovery of the Great Falls of the Missouri near Great Falls, Montana. The river was named by Meriwether Lewis after his cousin, Maria Wood.
The river outlet works are controlled by a 5.0-by 5.0-foot, high-pressure gate having a capacity of 1,540 cubic feet per second, and discharging through a 72-inch-diameter steel pipe.
The Lower Marias Unit with Tiber Dam and Lake Elwell was selected as the most desirable plan of development because of the relative need of the local area and its important relationship to the overall Missouri River Basin Program (now Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program).
During 1940-1941, the recorded flow of the MariasRiver reached an all time low, limiting to 110,000 acres the land that could be irrigated by initial storage of the MariasRiver runoff.
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