Missouri National Recreational River
When Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their expedition navigated the waters of the Missouri River, it flowed freely from its headwaters in the northern Rocky Mountains to its terminus in the Mississippi River. Numerous American Indian groups lived near the river, nurtured sacred relationships with it and the surrounding lands, and depended on the river for survival.
Much has changed in the 200 years since the corps’ travels. Euro-American settlers who moved to the region considered the river unruly and sought to improve navigation. Federal efforts at taming the river increased after the Civil War, but the greatest blow to the Missouri River came with passage of the 1944 federal Flood Control Act. Part of this legislation, the Pick-Sloan Plan, authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct dams and reservoirs intended to “secure the maximum benefits for flood control, irrigation, navigation, power, industrial and sanitary water supply, wildlife, and recreation.”
Six major dams and a 732-mile navigation channel have been built on the Missouri River since the 1930s. These projects have changed the river’s natural flows and movements, with effects on plants, animals, riverbank erosion, and sediment transport. American Indian lands were flooded, and sacred places and burial grounds were inundated with water. In 1976, the Water Resources Development Act authorized the Corps of Engineers to stabilize the banks of the Missouri River to control erosion, a matter exacerbated by their own dams and unnatural hydrograph. This has had cumulative detrimental effects on habitats and wildlife.
Under the auspices of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (WSRA), two remnant free-flowing segments of the Missouri River are now protected as the Missouri National Recreational River. The park contains some 34,159 acres of land, with just 250 acres actually owned by the National Park Service.
