In this episode, we detour off the main channel of the Mississippi River to get to know its longest tributary: the Missouri River. Our guide for this exploration is Steve Schnarr, Race Director for Missouri River Relief. We covered a lot of territory (like the Missouri River), so our conversation is split between two episodes. In this one, part one, we cover some of the basics of the river’s geography, including where it begins and how long it is. Steve describes what we know of the ecology of the natural river, including where it picked up all the sediment it was so famous for. Steve describes the history of dam building on the Missouri River, why we did it, and how it impacted the Native American communities that lived along the river. We also talk about the hopes for commercial navigation on the Missouri River that just never seem to realize.
Show Notes
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Transcript
Mon, Jun 02, 2025 5:36PM • 58:02
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Missouri River, Big Muddy, sediment load, Native American tribes, dams, flood control, ecology, channelization, barge traffic, Missouri River Relief, MR340 race, Big Muddy Speaker Series, Lewis and Clark, Fort Peck Dam, Pick Sloan Plan.
SPEAKERS
Dean Klinkenberg, Steve Schnarr
Steve Schnarr 00:00
The Missouri River was known by many Native American tribes, but also, you know, European explorers and beyond as the Big Muddy or some version of that, you know, the Omaha called it smoky waters. And there’s actually, you know, kind of different theories about was that because of the sandstorms that would happen from the big sand bars along the river, cause, you know, calling it smoky water, or was it because of the color of the water and how the sediment just sort of billowed up in the water as it flows by? But, yeah, those those arid regions of the the Upper Great Plains was the source of that amazing sediment load that the Missouri River used to carry, and was the main source of sediment for The Lower Mississippi, and really built much of Louisiana.
Dean Klinkenberg 01:17
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let’s get going. Welcome to Episode 62 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. In this episode, we detour off the main channel of the Mississippi River to get to know its longest tributary, the Missouri River. Our guide for this exploration is Steve Schnarr, who is Race Director for Missouri River Relief. Our conversation went so long, in fact, that I’m splitting this into two episodes, so there’ll be part two of this will be released in two weeks from when this one drops. So here in part one, what we’re going to cover are some of the basics about the Missouri River. Steve will tell us a bit about the geography where the river begins. We have a quick little chat about that name Missouri River and whether that is the name that should continue to the Gulf of Mexico. And then Steve tells us some about the ecology of the old river, an interesting fact about how dead trees kind of stabilize that old river in the absence of the bedrock that’s common in most other rivers the world, trees kind of provided a bedrock function in a way for stabilizing the Missouri River’s channel. We talk extensively about dams, how they changed the Missouri River, how they impacted Native American communities along the Missouri River. We also touch on how much the river is channelized compared to the historic river. We do have a little conversation about barge traffic and commercial navigation on the river, and how barge advocates always say that we’re just on the verge of a boom in river traffic, and it just never seems to happen. This seems to be especially true along the Missouri River. So it’s a pretty wide ranging discussion on the geology, ecology and engineering history along the Missouri River. I think you’ll enjoy it quite a bit. Well, thanks to those of you who continue to show me some love through Patreon. For as little as $1 a month, you can join the community and get early access to these episodes, plus you get to know that you make me feel really happy with your support. And that’s got to count for something, right? You can join the Patreon community at patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If Patreon is not your thing, well, buy me a coffee. I drink coffee quite a bit. You can help feed my caffeine habit. If you want to know how to do that, go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast and you’ll find instructions there at that same address, MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. You’ll also find a listing of all previous 61 episodes. You can listen to any of those previous episodes through those links, and you’ll also be able to access the show notes for this and all prior episodes. All right. Well, let’s get on with the interview again. This is part one of a two part conversation. Come back in two weeks for the second half of the interview. Steve Schnarr is the Race Director for Missouri River Relief, a nonprofit based in Columbia, Missouri that is dedicated to connecting people to the Missouri River through stewardship, education and recreation. He organizes the Missouri American Water MR340 and The Race to the Dome. The MR340 is a 340 mile non stop race on the Missouri River from Kansas City to St. Charles and this year 2025 marks the 20th year of the race. Steve has worked with Missouri River Relief for 20 years, serving as the Program Manager and Executive Director before taking the helm as Race Director. He’s also a co-founder of the Big Muddy Speaker Series, a monthly series of presentations from experts on topics related to the Missouri River, which is also hosted by Missouri River Relief. Steve, welcome to the podcast.
Steve Schnarr 05:51
Thank you. I’m a fan, Dean. I don’t think I’ve listened to all of your podcasts, but I’ve listened to many, many of them. I really enjoy them. It’s a cool way to get a lot of different perspectives on the wonderful Mississippi River.
Dean Klinkenberg 06:10
Well, thanks, you know, I think part of what I would interest me too, is expanding the conversation and reminding folks that there are other rivers that are important as well, which is why I wanted to have you on the podcast today to talk about that other big river, the Missouri that probably doesn’t get anywhere near the love that it deserves. How did you get interested in the Missouri River?
Steve Schnarr 06:35
Well, I grew up in Chesterfield, Missouri, which is right next to the Missouri River. And that’s not why I got interested in the Missouri. I barely even knew it existed. When I lived there in Chesterfield, there was no great access to the river. You know, we drove over it on a bridge, but I was only, you know, kind of marginally aware that that was it was different than the Mississippi, and I didn’t quite understand how it all fit together when I was a kid, you know, and we were certainly not taught much about it. I moved away, out west, down south, and then decided to come back to Missouri to take some classes on plants at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Was able met some friends there that lived down by the river. I ended up down by the Missouri River, and some folks showed me that you could go paddling on the river. And I love paddling. I love rivers, and this river just felt wild, and it seemed like there was no one out there. And I just kind of fell in love with it, and I also fell in love with the history of it, and and I became a little bit obsessed. At the time I worked for a little weekly newspaper in Ashland, Missouri, and I convinced my or the publisher, I mean there was pretty much two of us that put the paper together, but I convinced my publisher that that the Missouri River needed to be part of the coverage of this little newspaper. And so I started, you know, studying up on the issues related to the river, and I would write little articles about things going on about the river. And then I discovered the folks, the amazing people at Missouri River Relief, went to their first river cleanup. I was just a little amazed that there was this, all these people that wanted to help clean up the Missouri River. I never saw anyone out there when I was out there, you know, and I had to know who these people were. It turns out I already knew a bunch of them, but through my event, you know, volunteering and then eventually working for Missouri River relief. I’ve just been really lucky to meet a lot of the the people, the scientists, biologists that are studying the river and have been for, for many years, and really it, you know, and historians, and just just really been able to learn a lot more about this river that I’ve been obsessed with for decades now.
Dean Klinkenberg 09:25
Wow. So it was kind of a slow, gradual love affair, maybe. Yeah, that began with that time along the river. Do you remember where you first sort of put a canoe in on the Missouri?
Steve Schnarr 09:39
Yeah, sure. My friend Nancy and I, she had been paddling on the river for many years, and she wanted to show me, you know, how it’s done. So I think that we, I can’t remember, I just remember putting in, I know that we put in at Rocheport. So there’s little Moniteau Creek at Rocheport that goes on to the river, and there’s a little boat ramp on the backside of town. So we put in there and paddled on the beautiful little Moniteau Creek out to the river. And I just remember we were doing a full moon float, but it was before sunrise when we got on the river, and I just remember seeing that water rushing past the mouth of the Moniteau Creek, and being like, I’m pretty sure I asked Nancy, like, “Are you sure this is okay? Like, is this an okay place to put on?” I mean, that seems crazy, you know. And, and she’s like, Oh, absolutely not just come. Just paddle, paddle, paddle. So, you know, we paddle out there, and then, you know, the current caught us a little bit, and maybe there’s a little jig, but all of a sudden you just feel like you’re on this big, slow moving lake and and really start to feel the power of all that water underneath you. And then we went through the beautiful stretch by Rocheport, below Rocheport, by the I 70 bridge, and down there, where there’s just those absolutely beautiful bluffs. And as the sun was setting, the bats were coming out, you know, it just, yeah, it was, it was a perfect introduction.
Dean Klinkenberg 11:14
I wish more people would would have that experience, you know, to feel the Missouri River like that and experience the scenery and the wildlife around there. I don’t remember exactly what year this was, but I remember in the ’80s, I want to say, my parents were living in Marshall, and my Dad wanted to do a little canoe trip on the Missouri just something kind of quick. So I’m guessing we must have put in at Waverly, which would have probably been the nearest boat ramp to them. I don’t remember how far we went, it probably would have been to whatever the next boat ramp was. I’ve got pictures of me and my Dad in a canoe on the Missouri River, and I remember my Mom was absolutely terrified about us doing this, but I just kind of remember that feeling of getting out there on the bigger water and feeling the current, and it felt really satisfying and different. And up to that point, I’d really only done smaller rivers, so it was pretty eye opening to get out there on the Missouri River at that time, there were no other paddlers around either.
Steve Schnarr 12:17
Yeah, it is. You feel vulnerable, you know. And I think it’s, it is crucial to get out there. I mean, I say it’s crucial, but people, you know, I always suggest that people, that you go with someone who’s done it before, you know, but that’s a little limiting to, you know. I mean, it’s like hard to find someone who’s done it before, for some people and you know, and there’s a lot of people who just go for it, you know. Just know where you’re putting in and where you’re taking out. That’s really important. And it’s important to check the river levels. You may not understand what they mean yet, you know, but make sure it’s not in flood stage. But you know, so many people do trips on Ozark rivers, and there’s obviously risks and dangers with a big river like the Missouri that don’t exist on those little Ozark rivers, but those rivers are dangerous too, and people are often caught above, you know, sort of in situations above their skill level, where there are trees dangling over the river and quick turns that, You know, it’s not clear where you should go in that kind of stuff, you know, you you don’t really have that on the Missouri River. You know, there’s different risks.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:51
Absolutely. We can get into that more a little bit later, because we are going to talk some about recreation too, and probably we’ll come back and circle back to maybe some tips for those folks who want to get out there. Let’s take a step back for the moment, though. I’m sure a lot of people who listen to this podcast have a baseline knowledge of the Missouri River anyway, but let’s do it anyway and kind of popcorn through some of the quick basic facts about it. So, so where does the Missouri River start?
Steve Schnarr 14:14
Well, it start the group of rivers and streams that form the Missouri River. You know, it first gets its name at a place called Three Forks Montana. So that’s where the Gallatin, the Madison and the Jefferson Rivers come together. Now those three rivers all have different paths coming out of the Continental Divide, the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone Park in the adjacent area. So there’s sort of this, this web that comes together to form the Missouri River. From that, from those, those highlands you know, up near Yellowstone. Park in the sort of furthest reach of the Missouri River, if you, if you follow up the Jefferson in a string of other tributaries, would be Brower’s Spring, which is really like right near the Continental Divide in the Centennial Mountains, pretty much the border between Montana and Idaho. So Brower’s Spring is the the furthest permanent source of water that feeds the Missouri River. And I don’t remember the exact distance from the mouth, but it’s something like 2500 miles. Now, if you, if you go down through Hell Roaring Canyon and Red Rock Canyon, the Beaverhead River, down the Jefferson River, and then you come to Three Forks where the Jefferson joins with those other two streams and forms the Missouri River. It’s 2341 miles from that point to the Mississippi River, where the Missouri joins the Mississippi. And some people say that it should be called the Missouri River, from that point down to the Gulf of Mexico. But that’s probably another podcast. Maybe you’ve even done that podcast, Dean, I’m not sure, but I know you came talk to us for an hour about about about that issue. What should the Lower Mississippi be called? But yeah, that’s the basics. So, you know, in the process, the Missouri River flows north, and then it flows east across Montana, and then south through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and then it takes turn to the left and skirts the Ozark Plateau as it heads towards St Louis, all the way across the state of Missouri.
Dean Klinkenberg 14:14
Yeah, I might have a few thoughts on the whole naming thing as you I’m sure you remember. That was very nice of you to invite me out to the Big Muddy Speaker Series to have that conversation in what some might consider enemy territory, since my stance did not align with that of everybody there. But I will say this, like, just as to poke fun at all this, like, there is a lot of these names are obviously like, for example, why isn’t the longest stretch called the Missouri River all the way up to Brower’s Spring? Like, why is, doesn’t that name carry all the way up to the top of the mountain? Why? Why did the I’m assuming it was Lewis and Clark who gave names to it.
Steve Schnarr 17:06
It was Lewis and Clark, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 17:34
So yes, they made a decision because they had people they wanted to flatter right with by naming certain smaller branches after them.
Steve Schnarr 18:00
Yeah, and they didn’t have time to follow all those and figure out which was the longest one at that, you know. So you just give them new names, and then for the people that help pay for your trip, you know, like NASCAR, right? But then we’re stuck with those names, unfortunately.
Dean Klinkenberg 18:17
Yeah, yeah, they do tend to carry on. So, the Missouri River has a huge drainage basin and much larger than the Upper Mississippi does. You know when those two meet. I made a quick note of my to myself that it covers like one six of the continental United States. It’s a huge area. Have you had a chance to visit the Missouri River in those upper reaches up near where it begins, or near those three rivers?
Steve Schnarr 18:47
A few, a few places up there. I have not done much paddling in that area, but I’ve certainly heard a lot of stories from people who’ve been paddling up there. And I love that I haven’t been to Brower’s Spring. I really hope to someday, but I have been to Three Forks, which is so cool. It’s so beautiful, and it’s such an interesting thing this. And then we, sort of after that, we, we drove down the Missouri River, which kind of goes north there. We did do a boat cruise at a place called Gates of the Mountains, which is basically kind of like where, if you were going upstream on the Missouri River, it’s really where it kind of like enters the Rocky Mountains and it forms this gorge through this row of mountains. It’s just stunning. It’s just so beautiful. In that part of the river, there’s a series of small dammed lakes, and so, you know, even back in the days before European expansion out here, you know, these are mountain rivers coming together to form the Missouri River, but you really started already getting this sediment load coming in. But it’s this series of dams traps that sediment. So some of those stretches below Gates of the Mountains are world renowned trout fisheries. So crystal clear, absolutely beautiful, you know, stretches through the Rocky Mountain foothills, and that’s just like a whole different feel. You know, everybody’s got drift boats, and they’re floating in there. They’re going down through there. And then you go through Great Falls, Montana, which was one of the wonders of the world, but it is now under and it’s still, you know, there’s still beautiful parts of it, but it, there’s like three dams through that section that are harnessing hydropower that have essentially flooded the Great Falls of the Missouri River. And then below that, you get into the White Cliffs area and the Missouri River Breaks, which is just unbelievably stunning scenery down there, and really, in the middle of nowhere that is all, uh, I believe it’s a National Wildlife Refuge, but I might parts of it are parts of it a National Wildlife Refuge, and parts, I think, are a national monument. But, um, that’s a spot I was lucky enough to do a four day canoe trip through with some friends, and it’s just, yeah, wow, that is a beautiful stretch of the river.
Dean Klinkenberg 21:48
It’s such a striking difference from the part of the river we know down here where, you know, we have the bluffs and we have some floodplain for us, but primarily, you know, in through Missouri, much of the river is passing through agricultural land. So that’s that’s a very different geography up in Montana and the Dakotas that the Missouri river passes through.
Steve Schnarr 22:12
Have you been in that White Cliffs area, Dean, or any of those other places?
Dean Klinkenberg 22:17
I don’t remember ever being there. I’ve been to Grand I just lost the name Great Falls. I’ve been there, and I remember these sort of random memories of crossing the Missouri River in different places I’ve been on I-90 in South Dakota, where it crosses over the Missouri River, the big reservoir. But I don’t feel like I looked at it with the same eyes that I might now, since I’ve spent so many years getting to know the Mississippi, I think I would probably see those parts of Missouri very differently. Now, if I were to go up there, though that’s on my short list of places I’d love to paddle, though.
Steve Schnarr 22:57
Yeah, that the section below Fort Benton, but especially below Coal Banks Landing. And there’s, you know, several sections you can string together there, depending on how much time you have and and everyone has their favorite stretch, but, like, it is just really stunning and beautiful and so remote and in lots of Badlands, you know, in that those Badlands in eastern Montana and in North Dakota are really the main source of the mud and the sand that forms the the, you know, the natural Missouri River, like heartbeats. The Missouri River was known by many Native American tribes, but also, you know, European explorers and beyond as the Big Muddy or some version of that, you know, the Omaha called it “Smoky Waters.” And there’s actually, you know, kind of different theories about was that because of the sandstorms that would happen from the big sand bars along the river, cause, you know, calling it smoky water, or was it because of the color of the water and how the sediment just sort of billowed up in the water as it flows by, but, yeah, those those arid regions of the Upper Great Plains, was the source of that amazing sediment load that the Missouri River used to carry, and was the main source of sediment for the lower Mississippi and really built, you know, much of Louisiana over the course of many 1000s and even millions of years, when you dip into the ancestral rivers that sort of lived in this part of the world as well before there was actually a Missouri River, so to speak.
Dean Klinkenberg 25:03
Yeah, we basically relocated a lot of the Upper Great Plains down to Louisiana via these big rivers. So tell us a little bit about what the Missouri River was like as a river before we built dams and really began to reshape it with our engineering projects?
Steve Schnarr 25:23
Right. Well, you know, I wasn’t there, Dean,
Dean Klinkenberg 25:28
I know you’re not that old, but I’ve read some books.
Steve Schnarr 25:33
You know that sediment load that that river carried, I think was such a part of the character of the natural Missouri River in a lot of different ways that you don’t always think about. But more than many rivers the Missouri especially, you know, when once you get out of the Rocky Mountains and in sort of you start getting into the Dakotas, it’s more and more is picking up this nature as it’s picking up more sediments. But it was an ever changing, you know, change would be one of the big essences of this river. And it’s true of all rivers, they move around, you know, they don’t want to stay in one place. They build up a point bar, they erode away the bank across from it. They’re always moving and snaking through the landscape. But the Missouri River was that kind of on a different level because of that sentiment load it carried. You know, it would, it would really be depositing. It was almost like the the river valley itself was like a delta. You know, when you talk about the Mississippi River down in the Delta, you know, not the, not the delta in the state of Mississippi, but the, the actual sort of Bird’s Foot Delta below New Orleans, that includes the Atchafalaya, right? Like the there, you sort of have sediment building up, and then all of a sudden, this other way is a quicker way to get to the bottom. And so the river is just kind of like changing as it’s building its own structure that it lives in. And with the Missouri River, it’s sort of like the whole valley was like a delta, you know, it’s constantly depositing sediment and getting new sediment in that, you know, starts to fill in its channel, so then it finds another less steep channel, or suddenly it’s raising the elevation of a certain place, so it decides to chase around and find something else, or the river would flood, and decide it’s just going to consume this whole forest over here, rather than go and this big loop that It had created over years is just constantly moving it was a braided channel for much of its length. So usually, lots of islands, some of those, many of those would be sand bars, and some of them would have trees on them of varying ages. Sometimes there would be very, very large islands as the river was trying to figure out what it wanted to do. You know, a lot of what we know about the character of the Missouri River is from the writings of steamboat pilots and people that really, you know, spend a lot of time trying to understand how this weird river worked. And, you know, it’s fascinating to read those old stories like how how they were able to read the river. You know, a few more things that were very different about the river then when the river would consume, and, you know, maybe it create, it starts creating a big loop, a big bend, and then eventually it decides, in a flood, to cut off that bend. That bend might be full of a forest of giant cottonwood trees. And so it just consumes those, and they come, you know, into the bed of the Missouri River, and they’re just stuck there. So, like, there would be places where there’s they would call them the steamboat pilots would call them snags or sawyers, depending on sort of how they behaved in the current. There would just be monster fields of those. And then sometimes those would capture driftwood as it’s floating by, and you get these huge log jams that were very difficult to bypass. Some year, you know, you might go up the river, and the short shoot on the right around an island might be the deepest, best place for a steamboat, and then you come back the next year, and it’s totally the opposite, you know, depending on what happened. The river used to be about three times, on average, wider than it is now. If we’re talking about the channelized portion of the Missouri River, the free flowing, channelized portion below the lowest dam on the Missouri we’ll talk about those dams in a little bit. But you know that section of the river, it’s about three times narrower now than it was naturally. So we have squeezed that river so naturally it was shallower and sprawling. And there were some areas where it would really, really sprawl, and it would be really, really shallow and super wide, you know. And people could often walk across that river in certain places, especially in that Iowa Nebraska reach. And then, you know, another big change to the river. I mean, there’s kind of a couple, and it’s hard to talk about how the river used to be without talking about a little bit about how it is now. You know, it’s kind of the conversation kind of goes back and forth. But, you know, we have built these six very, very large dams for very, very large reservoirs along the Missouri River, starting at the Fort Peck Lake in Montana. And you know those that reservoir system was designed to capture spring snow melt. The snow melt from the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, which kind of come in two different pulses. Naturally, they sort of would happen in in, sort of March, April, and then you’d have this May, June. So these two different spring rises that were most years on the Missouri River, and that kind of natural flooding every year has been kind of contained by this dam system to a certain extent. So the dams are designed to hold that spring flooding and then release it in the summer so that there’s a more consistent flow of water below the dams through Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri and Kansas, for barge navigation, for drinking water, for cooling power plants, all the kind of uses that we put that river to, None of which are really exactly as envisioned, you know, and and as with all these massive engineering projects, like, what actually happens is sort of never what was advertised, but I’m sure we’ll get more into that. But you know, so that process really had changed the sort of life beat, the heartbeat of the Missouri River, and all of those little things, those changes, have all had impacts on the wildlife of the river, including the fish and everything that lives in that river. You know, one of the biological drivers of the river was all those trees stuck in the river. You know, when you know a kind of a unique thing about the Missouri, it’s not totally unique. We have many rivers like this. But, you know, most rivers have a sort of bedrock bottom, or they have some kind of rock containment, you know, that keeps them in a certain kind of place. The Upper Mississippi has a lot of, you know, structure to it that’s kind of keeping it geologically. In one place, the Missouri is just, it’s just sand and mud, you know, there’s just not a lot of rock, you know, there. There’s gravel, absolutely, which is a important piece of the puzzle, but in great stretches of the Missouri River, it’s just sand and mud and it just wants to melt away, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 34:09
Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself, just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book “The Wild Mississippi,” goes deep into the world of Old Man River learn about the varied and complex ecosystem supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them, and where you can go to experience it all. Find any of these wherever books are sold. So really, there, it doesn’t have the guardrails that the bedrock would would give a river. So it’s sort of a little bit, maybe at times as a little bit like a garden hose without holding it, just kind of, you know, fling from side to side, given the amount of water flowing through, prone to change its direction. You hinted at this like and there were far bigger variations in its flow, naturally, when it was a before we dammed it up. I mean, there’s still variations, but any nothing like it used to be where the with those spring snow melts and spring rains would really pump the river up, and then by mid to late summer, and as you said, you might be able to walk across it in places,
Steve Schnarr 35:35
Yeah, absolutely just a different spirit to it, you know, but, you know, one of the things I do love about the Missouri River is that that spirit of the old river is there. And you you find it anytime you get out there and explore, so that that heart is there. We’ve but we certainly have changed a lot about it. I think one of, one of the things that I was getting at is all those trees, the snags, you know, stuck in the river originally that that was like the hardscape for the Missouri River, right? So there’s not rocks for, you know, tiny insect larvae to hunker down in that form, that bedrock, that base of the ecosystem in the river. So it was those trees stuck in there that that’s where all the macroinvertebrates would live, the dragonfly larvae, and all the things that were the basis, you know, of so much of the food chain would be in these trees stuck in the bottom of the river. And that’s something we don’t have, you know, but we have it. It’s been replaced by a lot of rock maintaining the shape of the river. So there’s like, a different sort of community that’s related and tied in with all that rock than there used to be with all of this wood stuck in the bottom. But again, it’s just like same river, you know, but there’s a different spirit to it, you know. Differently going on.
Dean Klinkenberg 37:08
I was doing some reading on this before we started chatting to refresh my memory on the dam building, and it the history of building dams on the Missouri River goes back further than I than I knew, although the main period was also pretty darn recent. So can you just sort of take us through quickly little history of dam construction on the Missouri River?
Steve Schnarr 37:37
Yeah, I don’t have all of the dates nailed down by any means, but the the first dam built on the Missouri River was the Fort Peck Dam. And if I’m right, I believe that was in the ’30s. So it was a Depression era Works Progress Administration, like based project trying to hire a lot of human beings to make that project happen. So that was done in my understanding and memory before there was really whole plan for all of these dams on the Missouri River. So the Flood Control Act of 1944 was another big legislative driver that laid out that further plan, you know. So it’s often known as the Pick-Sloan Plan, where it’s this kind of marriage of two different ideas on how to manage water in a watershed. So in one of those concepts is that you build a lot of small dams, like in every tributary, like in a watershed, so you’re creating all these small water control projects that are storing water for use in dry times and also mitigating floods, theoretically. And then there’s sort of an another concept, which is the very large dams along the main stem of the Missouri River to capture flood water, provide flood protection, but then release in the summer for uses downstream. So that’s there ended up being this kind of marriage between those two concepts. And after the Fort Peck Dam was finished, and then the Flood Control Act of 1944 was passed, there’s really a series of very, very large dams built through the Dakotas for the rest of the system. You know, one of the the things that often kind of gets forgotten about this dam building era is that you. Uh, the placement of these in, you know, in this, this kind of came out, you know, several years ago when the protests were happening at Standing Rock related to the oil pipeline that was being built there. But it was an it was sort of an opportunity to revisit the damage that had been done previously. But you know, one of the things that happened is that these dams were built in locations where they would provide flood control protection to large white settlements on the river by flooding Native American reservation land. So in the Dakotas, the rivers, and especially the Missouri river, the river valleys were where the trees were. There just wasn’t a lot of trees in large parts of the Dakotas, right? So along the Missouri River, you had these very abundant forests, cottonwood based forest right along the river, the Native Americans that lived along there, from the Mandan, the Hidatsa, the Arikara and then so many Sioux, Lakota Sioux and other groups that use that those river valleys throughout the Dakotas, you know, a lot of them had these pretty elaborate systems of farming in those bottoms, you know, related to, like, what the river does and also what this forest does. And the forests were like, this huge source of food, berries, medicines, all kinds of stuff. The biodiversity in those river bottoms was really crucial and important. So when some of those Sioux tribes managed to keep reservations that included pieces along the river, you know, it was something that was still that connection to so much cultural knowledge and history related to the river. So when these dams were put in, and much of that bottom land was flooded in these reservations, you know, it was like one more torturous insult, you know, but also kind of invisible to most of the nation, you know, just a lot of people don’t really know that history.
Dean Klinkenberg 42:30
Right. And and that land, like you said, that land provided sustenance, like in an area that was so arid and without a lot of area, part of a lot of those areas that were great for farming, those fertile lands in the Missouri River Valley, also were a great place to grow food and and have sustenance. So when that’s flooded and taken away, then that your your main source of food production is gone too.
Steve Schnarr 42:58
Absolutely. Yeah, and it’s an interesting thing up there a friend of ours, Janet Moreland, that paddled the the entire Missouri River quite a few years ago. She also spent a couple of years working on the the Lower Brule Reservation in kind of central South Dakota along the river. There’s a section where it’s called the Big Bends, where the river makes this giant loop around, kind of a bluff and a hill. And the reservation is on that bluff in the hill, and in all the folks there refer to it as the river, but the white communities, a lot of them refer to it as the lake. So it’s just an interesting dichotomy there in language, you know, and how people look at this body of water and what it is and what it means to them, you know.
Dean Klinkenberg 43:59
Absolutely. huh? This one of the other things I think that’s maybe very different along the Missouri River too than the Mississippi, is that there are still, there’s there are reservations or Native American communities in different parts of the Mississippi, but they tend to be at the upper end and the lower end of the river, and not much in between. But along the Missouri River, you have Native American communities that still live along the river to this day.
Steve Schnarr 44:27
Yeah, absolutely. And, and it’s just it is so interesting. And I’m by no means an expert, and I don’t know a lot of people that live in all of these different reservations, you know, but it’s, it is interesting how there are different projects going on in different locations along the river to reintroduce some level of like ecological balance. Once again, you know, including up in the Fort Peck Reservation, which has one of the larger private buffalo herds, and some of which I believe is, is actually free range on that reservation. But, you know, and they’ve been working with the kind of Emerging American Prairie Project around the Missouri River, which is trying to create, you know, ultimately, a huge prairie system that’s interconnected, that would eventually allow for free ranging bison. That’s that. That’s something that I think that the Fort Peck Reservation is pioneering right now. Which you know more to come on that right? Obviously, there’s been a lot of damage as well to these communities that continue to struggle with that legacy, you know, and when it comes to the history of the river and the heartbeat and spirit of the river, you know, a lot of those tribes that are still up there. I mean, they they got it. They carry it. You know, the the Mandan area, the Hidatsa, the three affiliated tribes in North Dakota, north of Standing Rock, that is such an interesting culture. And was, you know, we learned some about it from Lewis and Clark when they went through and they spent the winter in one of those villages there. But, you know, that was an ancient culture that had developed some of the probably most advanced agriculture in what is now the United States, you know, for hundreds and 1000s of years, really, and it was all based around understanding the river, you know, and working with the river and utilizing those, those forested flood plains and prairies along the river, and then the uplands where they lived pretty, pretty deep and fascinating cultures that that still live there.
Dean Klinkenberg 47:33
Like, you know, the essence, of course, I don’t know what the can’t get into the minds of anybody from that period of time, but it doesn’t seem like there was even sort of an impulse to try to figure out ways to control the river just for the benefit of human beings. It was very much, how do we live with this river as it is? How do we make adjustments? So let’s talk. Let’s use that to transition to the contemporary river a little bit more than so from what you know, what was the grand vision for all of the dams that were built, say, from the the ’40s on, along the main stem of the Missouri River? What were the primary selling points for that?
Steve Schnarr 48:14
Well, basically, by, I think, promising everything to everyone you know. So in the Dakotas, drinking water is a huge limiting factor, agricultural water, irrigation huge limiting factor in land use and in population growth. So by dangling that carrot, that’s a pretty exciting thing for the for those populations. Interestingly, that you know, irrigation usage from Missouri river water continues to grow, and there continues to be new systems pulling drinking water and other use water for other uses from the Missouri River, including some uses out of the watershed, which are pretty controversial, but that that kind of development continues on. You know, there’s just always going to be more straws kind of sticking into that river. The flood control thing was a important selling point for the lower river in particular. And of course, we’ve seen in in recent decades, several, you know, huge floods that were sort of within the design characteristics of the of the engineered system, but sort of secretly, you know, the way these dams were presented to the public, that those kinds of floods were not supposed to happen. But interestingly enough, the possibility of floods that large are built into the structure. Of those dams, they understood that there was the potential for something much larger. But the public was relatively unaware of that potential. And so in those areas, you know, below the string of dams, as you get into Sioux City, Iowa and further further south, you know, those folks, most of them really just they thought those dams were going to protect them, you know, and they built right on up to the river. It was the first time I was up in that area. I was shocked to see houses right next to the Missouri River like what? But you know that the memory of what this river can do can be brief sometimes, I think, but it will always remind us of what it can do.
Dean Klinkenberg 50:58
Right. So was that. Was it 2019 the year the the big flooding on that stretch of the Missouri?
Steve Schnarr 51:06
Yeah, with the 2011 was a very, very big and intense flooding event that was really driven. All these things are never, they’re never a simple answer to what causes a huge flood like that? There’s always a lot of factors. But like that, one was pretty much like some areas of Montana, getting basically a year’s worth of rain in about three weeks, right on top of a linger, a very large snow pack that was sticking around and not melting as fast as normal. So you had this huge rainfall event, right as a very large snowpack was melting really quickly, because it was getting late in the season, so that all kind of happened at once, and drove that flood. And then the 2019 flood was largely below the dams, driven by a a very intense storm all across Nebraska and the Dakotas, on top of, again, kind of a lingering snow pack of more snow than we had seen in recent years, and in a warm up. And that all just kind of happened right at the same time, and then there was a series of storms after that just sort of dragged that flood out all year long. It’s pretty astonishing.
Dean Klinkenberg 52:33
It is, I think I was thinking especially about 2019 because that was a good reminder that, you know, in a lot of those places, there’s just nowhere to go when there’s a lot of rain anyway, like we live under this illusion that we can control all this water and send it where we want to but there are obviously limits to what we can do. And if you, especially if you lived along the Niobara River in Nebraska 2019, there was nowhere to hide from that river once it was flooding, the landscape doesn’t have, you know, giant hills to retreat to or.
Steve Schnarr 53:11
Yeah, so, so intense. And you know that that was one of those situations where people that didn’t consider that they lived in a floodplain, really, you know, discovered that they actually did. But the combination of water having nowhere to go, plus all of this ice on the landscape that created ice dams, you know, it just like, yeah, suddenly people were experiencing water running through their homes, and they never really thought that they lived in a floodplain, right?
Dean Klinkenberg 53:49
I hope we get smarter. You know, over time. I’m not necessarily sure that’s the case. I don’t have faith that that’s always the case. Progress isn’t always linear, but I do hope we have, you know, in the future, more honest discussions about what these giant structures do and don’t do for us, and even, like the dams along the Missouri River, if you just look at them in terms of the purported benefits, like two of the downsides still are that because of the the environment, we lose a lot of water to evaporation because of all that open water and the in the hot plains, we lose a lot of water every year just for the evaporation. But also, dams have a lifespan and particularly along sediment rich rivers like the Missouri it may you know, it’s not going to be an issue for most of those dams in our lifetime, but there will come a time when those dams, the pools behind those dams, have filled in so much with sediment that they’re not serving their purposes anymore.
Steve Schnarr 54:56
Yeah, and you know, the small, smallest of those lakes on the Missouri River, the very most downstream, most like known as Lewis and Clark Lake. You know, they’re already experiencing that. They’re experiencing flooding problems. The Niobrara River that you mentioned, a very sediment laden river, you know, it, it comes into Lewis and Clark Lake right at the at the upstream end of it. So it sort of joins the Missouri River and Lewis and Clark lake at the same time. And that’s created this pretty wild maze of of sediment islands that are just slowly filling that lake in, you know. But you can see it from Google Earth, if you just hop on there and kind of scroll around, it’s, it’s pretty interesting. So the folks up there are working on, you know, trying to figure out, are there ideas of what they can do with the sediment to keep that lake from filling in, to reduce the flooding pressure on adjacent communities as it does fill in. And none of the answers are easy. Some of them probably need to involve changes to the dam structure itself to allow sediment to flow through, or having some sort of sediment pass through function in the adjacent landscape, people have talked about dredging and, you know, shipping sand, other places, you know, all kinds of stuff, but.
Dean Klinkenberg 56:32
Yeah, dredging is very expensive. So, yeah, I’m sure that’s one of the, one of the obstacles in doing that. If it was cheap, we’d be doing it a lot more often, but, uh, it’s expensive and time consuming, and there’s not always an obvious way to get rid of what you just removed.
Steve Schnarr 56:47
So, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I’m not sure that a human powered dredge operation can outpace the sediment that the Niobrara river is bringing in. You know, I’m not really sure.
Dean Klinkenberg 57:01
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon, you help keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg, if you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guidebooks for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that’s set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me Dean Klinkenberg.Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time you.
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