Big Muddy Badlands Big Muddy Badlands The Big Muddy Badlands are a series of badlands in southern Saskatchewan and northern Montana along Big Muddy Creek. They are found in the Big Muddy Valley, a cleft of erosion and sandstone along Big Muddy Creek. The valley is long, wide and deep. The valley was formed when it was part of an ancient glacial meltwater channel that carried great quantities of water southeastward during the last ice age. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century the Badlands formed the northern end of the "Outlaw Trail", a series of trails and stopping areas utilized by outlaws
Course of the Colorado River colorful and intricately sculpted rock formations. The Escalante River, a desert stream which runs through the sinuous slot canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, joins about two-thirds of the way down Lake Powell. The San Juan River, which carries runoff from the southern slopes of the San Juan Mountains and the Four Corners region in Colorado and New Mexico, joins several miles further downstream; it forms an arm of the lake nearly long. Although the San Juan contributes only about one-tenth of the Colorado River flow, it is extremely muddy, contributing as much as 40 percent of the total sediment