Bad Rock Canyon, about 2.64 miles east of Columbia Falls, Montana, is the narrow river passage where the Flathead River enters the Flathead Valley. Long used as a travel corridor, it formed part of a buffalo trail through the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains and was traveled by Plateau tribes including the Kalispel, Pend d'Oreilles, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai, and nearby Flathead on buffalo hunts. Today it carries U.S. Highway 2 and the BNSF Railway and serves as a gateway to surrounding mountains, public lands, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Hungry Horse Dam and Recreation Area, and Glacier National Park, while frequent rock slides continue to shape the canyon.