Meriwether Lewis and William Clark visited the Great Falls of the Missouri River in 1805. Clark mapped the area while the other expedition members portaged around a series of five falls. The party returned to this site on its trip from the Pacific coast a year later. In 1882 Paris Gibson visited the site; he returned in the spring of 1883 with a surveyor and an attorney, and a townsite soon was plotted and named Great Falls. Important contributors to the economy are Malmstrom Air Force Base, agriculture and tourism. Learn More...