It is widely recognized that improving water quality and habitat are often necessary to restore degraded watersheds; however, the relative importance of these actions is generally unknown. Remediation and restoration activities in the upper Arkansas River, a historically mining-polluted watershed in Colorado, provided an opportunity to quantify the effectiveness improvements in water quality and instream habitat. Long-term (1989-2024) monitoring conducted before and after remediation and restoration treatments showed significant differences in responses of benthic macroinvertebrate communities and brown trout (Salmo trutta) populations. Both macroinvertebrates and brown trout responded significantly to improvements in water quality, with macroinvertebrate metrics returning to reference conditions within about 10 years. In 2015 a large-scale habitat restoration project designed to improve the brown trout fishery in the Arkansas River was completed. Restoration treatments included planting riparian vegetation, bank stabilization, and installation of instream structures (e.g., boulders and large woody debris) to enhance pools and increase habitat heterogeneity. Habitat restoration significantly increased trout density and biomass; however, consistent with results of previous studies, we observed few changes in benthic macroinvertebrate communities after restoration was completed. Differences in the responses between macroinvertebrates and fish were likely due to different mechanisms that influenced recovery. Because high metal concentrations significantly degraded all biological compartments, we expected that remediation would improve macroinvertebrates and fish. In contrast, habitat restoration, which was designed to increase trout populations, also increased macroinvertebrate prey consumption. These results suggest that restoration of streams may be influenced by predator-prey relationships and potential top-down effects of fish on macroinvertebrate communities. Monitoring programs that assess changes in availability and utilization of prey resources by fish provide a more complete characterization of restoration effectiveness on stream ecosystems.