The Little Blackfoot Valley is filled with lush hay fields and distinctive rounded haystacks made with hay-stackers known as beaver slides. Invented before 1910 by Dade Stephens and H. Armitage in the Big Hole Valley about sixty miles south, the beaver slide revolutionized haying in Montana by helping keep wind from blowing hay away and by cutting stacking time considerably. To operate it, a large rake piled high with hay is run up the sloping arms of the slide, and at the top the hay dumps onto the stack. Side gates, added in the late 1940s, keep the stack in a neat pile and make it possible to stack higher. Although the rake is usually lifted by power taken from a tractor, truck, or car axle, some operations still use horse teams to muscle the hay up the slide. Aside from minor improvements, the beaver slide has remained unchanged since its inception, and while modern haying technology has replaced it in many areas, the Little Blackfoot remains one of several Montana valleys where the device and its distinctive haystacks can still be seen.