As part of its ongoing program to educate the public about the uniqueness of the area, the Lower Flathead Valley Community Foundation commissioned seascape artist Byron Pickering to create a painting of Glacial Lake Missoula.

     According to geologists, the lake was formed about 15,000 years ago during the last ice age when the Clark Fork River was dammed by ice near Sandpoint, Idaho.  The water was backed up almost to the Continental Divide on the east, through the Bitterroot Valley to the south and as far north as Polson, which was the terminus of another tongue of the British Columbia glacier.  The glacial ice went from over 5,000 feet thick in B.C. to approximately a quarter of a mile deep at Polson. Periodically, the dam broke at Sandpoint creating tremendous floods that scoured the scab lands in the Columbia Basin and created the Columbia Gorge.

     The Mission Mountains’ valleys were filled with glaciers from which large icebergs broke off as the water level fluctuated, as depicted in Mr. Pickering's painting. The painting's perspective is looking east from the national Bison Range, approximately 1,000 feet above the valley floor, and extends from Mount Harding on the left to the Mission Falls valley on the right.  A reproduction of this painting is on a permanent outdoor display at the Glacial Overlook.

     Byron has been honored by the use of "Glacial Lake Missoula" in a variety of articles and web illustrations; among them a 2005 feature in Montana University's Visions magazine. In 2006 it was a used on the pages on the Nova megafloods website in conjunction with the PBS special. It was most recently featured in the winter edition of the Mid Columbian Magazine, a Washington publication and, in 2008, "Acts and Facts" magazine.