RIVERSIDE, Wyo.

Man wasn’t always kind to the Encampment River.

Lumber sent down the river for railroad ties tore up its banks. Gravel was dredged from its bottom. Water was diverted to grind copper ore from the Sierra Madres.

It responded during the past century by flooding and widening. It dug into its banks every year, tearing out cottonwood trees and sending tons of dirt downstream.

“We were losing so much bank along the edge of it that in places where we’d built fence, the fence wasn’t there any longer. The bank had eaten away at the land,” said Ron Hawkins, ranch manager at the Brush Creek Ranch where the Encampment River flows. “In a couple of cuts, we were losing 20 feet a year for 100 feet down the creek.”

Three years ago, a handful of Wyoming conservation groups and government agencies decided to put the river back together again.

The first 3,400-foot section of the project is now complete. Another 1,400 feet will follow next summer in what is becoming one of the most ambitious river restorations ever completed in Wyoming by Trout Unlimited and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The Encampment River isn’t one of Wyoming’s largest or most iconic. But its problems are emblematic of those that have plagued Western rivers for more than a century.

The goal is to restore the river to a stable state, prevent erosion and improve fish habitat. Its price tag is $170 per foot, or nearly $600,000, for the first section. The result will hopefully be a healthier river, less prone to erosion and easier to navigate for floating anglers. It will also have more — and bigger — fish.

Those involved with the project compare it to major surgery. They are opening the river, fixing its insides and sewing it back together. After the scars fade, a river will be restored as a model for other broken waters.

“Instead of bandaging the habitat wounds, the single eroded bank or over-widened riffle, we are considering the health and stability of the entire system,” said Jeff Streeter, North Platte River project manager for Trout Unlimited.

Moving a river is expensive business. Streeter spearheaded the project for Trout Unlimited; aquatic habitat biologist Christina Barrineau worked on it for Game and Fish. Most of the money came from the Wyoming Wildlife Natural Resource Trust Fund, the Brush Creek Ranch and Game and Fish. Other partners varied from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to Encampment elementary school students.

Western rivers are known for their natural bends and turns. But the Encampment River had become downright unruly — and not in a nature-created-it kind of way.

It starts high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and dumps into the North Platte River upstream of Saratoga. The river runs stable through canyons for about 19 of its 26-mile journey in Wyoming. It’s the other seven miles that worry Streeter.

More than a century ago, natural structures in that seven miles were blown away with dynamite to help logs float down faster. Attempts to redirect flows only further damaged the system, Streeter said. The result was a river that moved in any new direction it pleased.

“She had cut herself in a couple of different places where she didn’t even belong anymore,” Hawkins, the ranch manager, said.

Not only was it a loss of pastureland, the damage dumped tons of dirt, rock and debris into the river each year.

Engineers from Stantec Consulting Services used computer models and examples from other, less damaged rivers to figure out where the stream would naturally have flowed, Streeter said. In the field, workers used heavy equipment to stack trees and other woody debris along the bank six feet down and 15 feet away from the river. The result is a wall that Streeter hopes won’t wash away with high flows.

Erosion coated the river bottom with silt, covering the gravel trout need for spawning beds. It also clouded the water, which meant fewer bugs and plants for food, said Barrineau. Fewer deep holes meant warmer water in the summer, no place to go in the winter and no place to hide from predators such as ospreys, eagles and kingfishers.

Cross veins — bigger rocks placed in a “v” pattern across the middle of the river — were built to keep flows in the center of the stream and allow fish passage. Areas that measured no more than 30 inches deep are now 6 feet.

The Encampment River’s brown and rainbow trout aren’t native to the area. But they were first stocked at the turn of the century and have become a staple.

Avid anglers are already noticing a difference.

Tom Wiersema started guiding in the Upper North Platte Valley in 1974 and operated one of the first businesses to take anglers on the Encampment River.

“Over the years we’ve seen some dramatic changes in the creation of channels that weren’t channels, small trickles that got bigger and bigger and became channels,” he said.

It was still a good fishery, but it was deteriorating and would likely not improve on its own.

The project looked rough at first. Churned gravel and uprooted trees made the banks look sterile. But life is coming back, Wiersema said.

“The people (Streeter) is working with have a vision that in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years the river will still be flowing in the same location and won’t have eroded many feet into someone’s hay meadow,” Wiersema said. “Fish will establish feeding lanes and laying lanes so they can reproduce. What we will have down the road is more fish and bigger fish in all conditions whether or not it’s a drought year.”

The Brush Creek Ranch agreed to allow few or no cattle at all on the banks for the next 10 years to allow maximum recovery. Now it’s up to the river to determine its new character, Streeter said.

He acknowledges the high price tag. He also says what can be learned from the restoration is invaluable, such as how to replant riparian areas at high elevation. In the end, he hopes people become more aware of the value of a river, whether it’s in Wyoming or somewhere else.

“Our rivers have been brutalized,” he said. “If you can foster ownership, then maybe one of those people can stand up and say, ‘Wait a minute, this is a resource that belongs to all of us.’”