Then and Now: The Missouri River
Then
The Missouri River encompasses 529,350 square miles. It flows 2,341 miles from its headwaters at the confluence of the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson Rivers in the Rocky Mountains at Three Forks, Montana, to its confluence with the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri.
From the headwaters in Montana, the Missouri River runs through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri where, in St. Louis, we have the confluence of the Missiouri and the Mississippi Rivers. Precipitation in the Missouri River Basin varies from an annual mean of 40 inches in the interior highlands of the Missouri Ozarks to 10 inches in the dry upland plains of North and South Dakota, and Montana. The Basin’s elevation drops from 14,000 foot peaks at its northwestern boundary to about 400 feet above sea level where it joins the Mississippi.
None of these facts were known when Lewis and Clark began their Voyage of Discovery.
Then
In the early 1800’s, the Missouri River represented one of North America’s most diverse ecosystems with free-flowing water that carried a high level of sediment. Indian villages along the Missouri abandoned villages and established new ones as the River changed its path with the spring floods. Water ran high with the spring snow melt and fell with the dry fall and winter months. USA Today writer, Gerald Kreyche, described the river journey this way, “The trip upriver was backbreaking, as spring floods pushed the water downstrearn in torrents. Hunters walked the shores, while the
keelboat men alternately rowed, poled, sailed, and rope-pulled the
boat against the current. Wind, rain, and hail seemed to meet them at every turn in the serpentine Missouri. Snags and sandbars were everywhere. Bloated, gangrenous buffalo carcasses floated downstrearn, witnesses to the treachery of thin ice ahead. Often, for security reasons, the expedition party docked at night on small islands, some of which floated away as they embarked in the morning.”
Now
Damming in the 1940’s significantly altered the Missouri River ecology and the lives of the Native Americans and farmers who lived along its path. Deep lake reservoirs swallowed whole towns and including Like a Fishhook, Elbowoods, and Sanish villages. Today, waters are so low that Sanish Village is reappearing.
The dams block native fish migration to spawning grounds and spawning cues once triggered by increasing water temperatures coupled with rising river stages have been lost. Lower water temperatures and changes in the historical high and low water flow have lowered the population for many river fish and bird species, some of which are now threatened or endangered.
The stretch of the Missouri River between Stanton, ND and Bismarck, ND remains closest to the River as it existed when the Corp of Discovery traversed the state.
For details on the damming of the Missiouri River and other water issues in North Dakota, see the Prairie Public Television documentary More Precious Than Gold.