When it comes to rivers, Great Falls is home to both one of the biggest and smallest.

The Mighty Mo -- the Missouri River -- is a very close second in size to America's longest river. At 2,341 miles long, it's only nine miles shorter than the Mississippi.

The Tiny Roe -- Roe River -- is the world's shortest, running only 200 feet from Giant Springs into the Missouri, on the north edge of Great Falls.

"The Missouri River is the lifeblood of our community," says Dona Stebbins, Mayor of Great Falls. "It adds vibrancy. When Paris Gibson selected this site, water was a major factor in the settling of this town."

She says the Missouri "is vital to economic development. We've already seen that with the International Malting Co. plant, and we will see it with the Highwood Generating Station.

"I am excited about development on the west bank of the river, where a new federal building is currently under construction."

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A third river, the Sun River, flows out of the Rocky Mountain Front to empty into the Missouri at Broadwater Bay, near downtown Great Falls.

As if that weren't enough water under Great Falls' five bridges, Giant Springs (centerpiece of a state park of the same name) is the world's largest freshwater spring, bringing 6.5 million gallons of water per hour to the surface from an aquifer 75 miles away in the Little Belt Mountains. The unpolluted water was tested to be 2,900 years old.

Stebbins believes over the next century, oil is going to become insignificant and water will be even more valuable as a resource. Great Falls has a lot of it.

"It's no accident that the cradle of civilization was at the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates," says Stebbins, because man gravitates to water to build communities.