Up to the 1880s, the Indians of the northern plains utilized bullboats to traverse the region’s rivers and streams. Tribes, such as the Omaha, Ponca, Teton Lakota, and Arikara, built bullboats by first cutting down the thin willow saplings that grew in abundance along the banks of the Missouri and its tributaries. Employing axes and stout knives, craftsmen cut away all the branches and leaves from the trunk of each sapling. They then weaved the long, pliable willow poles together to form a bowl-shaped frame. Bison sinew, tied between the saplings, reinforced the crude frame. The top, open end of the boat, was then laid face down on the ground, with the curving bottom of the frame facing up. Wet bison robes, shorn of all hair, were placed over the bottom and sides of the frame and fastened to the saplings. The bullboat was then allowed to dry in the sun. In a day or two, the robes shrank and hardened around the frame of willows. In the final stage of construction, the Indians oiled the bison robes, making the small vessel waterproof. Continue Reading »
Tagged Arikara, Bison, Bullboat, Missouri River, Omaha, Phan Thiet, Ponca, Saigon, South China Sea, Teton Lakota, Thuyen Thung
In 1891, the Corps began building a six-foot deep navigation channel along the Missouri from the river’s mouth to Kansas City. In order to constrict the Missouri’s channel area and deepen the stream to six feet, Army engineers erected thousands of pile dikes and revetments along the river’s bank line. It took the Corps over four decades to complete that navigation channel. On June 27, 1932, in a ceremony at Kansas City’s waterfront, the bombastic Secretary of War, Patrick Hurley, declared the channel open to barge traffic. But barge operators stayed clear of the Missouri. The railroads and highways between St. Louis and Kansas City carried products cheaper and faster than the river route.
In the mid-1930s, the Roosevelt administration authorized and funded the extension of the six-foot navigation channel northward to Sioux City. Federal officials believed a longer navigation channel, which extended further inland and opened a larger market area to river traffic, would surely attract barge operators to the stream. In 1940, the Corps completed the navigation channel to Sioux City. But the hoped-for barge traffic still did not materialize because the railroads continued to provide a cost-effective alternative. Continue Reading »
Tagged Army Corps of Engineers, Boyer Chute, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gavin's Point Dam, John LaRandeau, Lisbon Bottom, Missouri River, Missouri River Flood of 1943, Missouri River Flood of 2011, Missouri River Navigation Channel, Missouri River Navigation Project, Patrick Hurley
Since the end of the last ice age, the Missouri River has experienced extreme fluctuations in volume. The Missouri has always bounced up and down because the weather across the Great Plains quickly shifts between hot and cold and between bone dry and monsoonal.
Since last year, Missouri Basin residents have witnessed firsthand the river’s capricious character. In June 2011, the Upper Missouri (the river northwest of Sioux City) hauled an astounding 13.8 million-acre-feet (MAF) of water. Never before, in 114 years of recording keeping, had the Upper Missouri carried so much water in one month. By the end of 2011, a total of 62.3 (MAF) entered the Upper Missouri. That equaled two and a half times the upper river’s normal annual runoff of 24.8 MAF. Last year’s runoff shattered the previous high flow record of 49 MAF, set back in 1997. Continue Reading »
On May 9, 2012, the Army Corps of Engineers will cut the discharge rate from Gavin’s Point Dam to zero, yes zero. That means no water will exit through the structure’s power tunnels or spillway gates. The Army must stop the flow of water through the dam in order to inspect it for any damages. Last year, the Missouri’s powerful floodwaters pounded the structure, especially its spillway. The Army wants to know just what the Missouri did to the dam. Without water pouring through Gavin’s Point Dam, the Missouri downstream through southeastern South Dakota and western Iowa will drop to a record low level. It remains to be seen just how low the Missouri will go. Much depends on tributary inflows. If the James and Big Sioux rivers do not dump large volumes of rainwater into the Missouri, we can expect the river at Sioux City to diminish to a trickle. We do know that during the eight hours the Army pinches off the river’s flow, the Missouri will drop to one of its lowest levels ever, possibly lower than at any time since the glacial formation of the stream 30,000 years ago. Continue Reading »
It has been almost seven months since the end of the Great Flood of 2011. In the intervening months, it has become clear that the Army Corps must change how it manages the Missouri River. Missouri Valley residents cannot go back to “business as usual” along the Mighty Mo. To do so invites disaster. But what must change?
Lower valley farmers, represented by the Farm Bureau Federation, the Corn Grower’s Association, and the Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association want the rapid reconstruction of old, misaligned levees, as well as the flood-prone navigation channel. Those two antiquated hydraulic systems worsened flooding last year and will contribute to flooding in the years ahead. But the members of those three organizations want to be able to raise corn and soybeans (which are now fetching record prices) on every conceivable acre in the lower valley, so they are aggressively promoting a policy that substantially increases the probability of another major flood. Unfortunately, the farm lobby is gambling with the safety of the lower valley in order to maximize farm income. Continue Reading »
On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed into a law an emergency appropriation for the Missouri Basin. On the face it, the multi-million-dollar appropriation appeared to be a godsend for residents of the Missouri Valley, because it allows the Corps to rebuild its damaged Missouri River hydraulic system of dams, levees, and navigational structures. For example, in the coming year, the Army plans on spending $51.9 million to repair Garrison Dam and another $10.5 million on the rehabilitation of Gavin’s Point Dam. Fixing the big dams is a proper expenditure of federal funds. If the dams remained in a state of disrepair, they would be far more likely to fail during the next flood. But the expenditure of untold millions on the lower valley’s defunct navigation channel and improperly aligned levee system represents an abject waste of federal dollars. Continue Reading »
Tagged Brigadier General John McMahon, Corn Grower's Association, Farm Bureau Federation, Garrison Dam, Gavin's Point Dam, Missouri Basin, Missouri River, Missouri River Barge Industry, Missouri River Levee, Missouri River Navigation Project, President Barack Obama, Steve King
It’s been almost six months since the end of the Missouri River flood. Since then, the upstream reservoirs have been drained of their floodwaters, the lower Missouri Valley has dried out, and the Corps has commenced the reconstruction of damaged dams, levees, and channelization structures. To add to the apparent good news, officials recently stated that the lack of snow in the mountains and dry conditions across the prairie-plains region have dramatically reduced the probability of flooding along the Missouri main-stem in 2012. All appears well along the Missouri. The worst is behind us – or so it seems. But before we engage in a collective sigh of relief, we should recognize that big, big problems still confront the residents of the Missouri basin. Continue Reading »
Tagged Blake Hurst, Brigadier General John McMahon, Claire McCaskill, Corn Grower's Association, Farm Bureau Federation, Gavin's Point Dam, Jay Nixon, Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association, Missouri River, Missouri River Degradation, Missouri River Flood 2011, Missouri River Navigation Project, Roy Blunt, Tom Waters
The Mekong River is one of the world’s longest rivers at 2,703 miles, longer than North America’s Missouri River (2,341 miles) and Mississippi (2,530 miles). Among Asian rivers, it ranks seventh in length, easily surpassed by China’s Yangtze and Yellow rivers at 3,917 miles and 3,395 miles respectively. By volume the river is dwarfed by the Amazon and Congo, but it still carries an impressive amount of water to its juncture with the South China Sea. The river’s average annual discharge rate is 565,008 cubic feet per second, which is almost exactly the same as the Mississippi’s discharge rate of 572,070 (cfs). Continue Reading »
Tagged Bassac River, Kratie Falls, Laos, Luang Prabang, Mekong Basin, Mekong Delta, Mekong River, Missouri River, Pakse, Phnom Penh, South China Sea, Tibetan Plateau, Tonle Sap
[Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming] In the winter months, when deep snow covers the sagebrush plains, hilltops, and scenic river valleys of Yellowstone National Park, bison abandon their trails and smaller traces and instead travel upon the park’s plowed asphalt highways. The animals have adopted the use of human highways for a simple reason. It is much easier for them to trek down a cleared, snow-free highway than it is to trudge off-road through several feet of snow. They expend far less energy moving from point A to point B, or from grazing site to grazing site. It is also safer for the big wooly mammals to move atop the paved highways. They can run faster from pursuing predators on the hard-surfaced roads. Plus, shy predators, such as wolves, are less likely to get close to the roadways for fear of coming into contact with homo-sapiens and their gawking, intrusive behaviors. It is likely that the plowed roads have increased the winter survivability rates of the park’s bison herds.
Continue Reading »
Tagged Bighorn Mountains, Bozeman Trail, Buffalo, Buffalo Hunting, Fort Laramie, Interstate 90, Lakota Sioux, Lodge Grass, Missouri River, Montana, Three Forks, Wyoming, Yellowstone Bison Herd, Yellowstone National Park
The Missouri River Canoe Expedition of 2003 took Todd Siefker and I through the White Cliffs of the Missouri and past several of the campsites of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. We actually stayed overnight in a few of the same camp sites used by the famed explorers. We did not stay in those campsites because we wanted to somehow imitate the explorers. As a matter of fact, we knew our two-man expedition paled in comparison to their epic journey. For starters, we navigated the Missouri in a plastic Royalex canoe. We also carried with us an array of ultra-modern outdoor gear that made our expedition more comfortable, faster, and lighter than that earlier sojourn. We slept inside a nylon tent, kept the rain off our bodies with Gore-Tex jackets, cooked food on a Primus multi-fuel stove (it could burn everything from unleaded gasoline to jet fuel), and called our loved ones from the remote reaches of Montana on a cell phone. We had nothing in common with Lewis and Clark. Rather, we chose to camp where they camped because their 1805 and 1806 campsites were still the best sites for camping along the Upper Missouri, especially in a land dominated by towering bluffs and gullied badlands. Continue Reading »
Tagged Blackfeet Indians, Cow Island, Fort Benton, Great Plains, Iowa, Lewis and Clark Expedition, Missouri River, Montana, Sioux City, Upper Missouri, White Cliffs of the Missouri
