South Dakota Public Broadcasting is celebrating the state’s 125th anniversary with a look at the things that make South Dakota unique. The Landscapes series visits people, places and experiences South Dakotans understand and treasure. In this land of infinite variety, the Missouri River brings us together in one sense, creates a rivalry in another, and divides us in yet another.
This is usually the first sound I hear when getting ready to go to work in the wee smalls of a weekday; the hiss of a warm shower that pokes me into consciousness. The water that flows into my family’s home in Centerville comes from the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System. It may have started as a Rocky Mountain snowfall, then traveled thousands of miles before being treated at the plant near Vermillion, then sent another 20 miles to the pipes in our home. That water, and that water system, gives Jim Auen a job at the Regional Water System plant.
Auen says, “If you’re gonna build a system like ours, you need to go where the water is—and in South Dakota, that’s the Missouri River. That’s a source that’s very high-quality for the region, and it’s also drought-tolerant.”
There aren’t many things that define South Dakota like the Missouri River—it has been largely tamed by the Pick-Sloan plan, the 1944 law aimed at keeping the river in its banks. The act led to the series of dams on the upper Missouri, in South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. But, as in 2011, the River still occasionally shakes off any attempts at control. But even the massive amounts of water that roared downstate, left the dams at speeds approaching 180 thousand cubic feet a second, and flooded thousands of homes and communities fascinated people from all over.
Park Ranger Karla Zeutenhorst says, “2011, if you look at it not from a flooding aspect, but from a tourism aspect—that was one of our highest tourism years ever. It was one of our record years for visitors, I think it’s dropped off some since then—but I really think, and I hesitate to say this, but I really think it put Yankton on the map.”
Zeutenhorst is a park ranger at the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center near Gavins Point Dam. She gets to share the history of the river and answer questions from travelers about the area as it is now, and as it was in the days of the Corps of Discovery expedition in the early 19th Century—Lewis and Clark’s efforts to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
Zeutenhorst admits, “Really, what tugs at my heartstrings about the Missouri River are the people on it. And that’s what got me into this profession. You see the good, Midwestern values of the people on the river. And I love seeing people recreate on the river, no matter what time of year it is.”
The Missouri River below Gavins Point Dam is much calmer this morning than the maelstrom of three summers ago. Darrin Deichmann and his family are taking full advantage, spending the week in the area, trying their luck at Bow Fishing. The family came to the river from their home in Norfolk, Nebraska, and Deichmann says they’ve kept busy.
He says, "Oh yeah, we were jet-skiing last night, and we’ll go jet-skiing again tonight up on the lake. It’s just beautiful up there—peaceful and the weather was nice and there’s a lot of fun things to do around town here.”
Deichmann, who serves as a financial advisor, is the picture of relaxation, his Norfolk Panthers cap on backward, as he launches another arrow toward a group of carp about 30 feet below. Next to him is his son, Isaac, sporting a Blaze Orange t-shirt fit for deer hunting or a day of road construction. He has his own bow, and he’s working to catch carp alongside his dad.
Isaac says, “It’s been pretty good—earlier I shot a 15-pounder; that was a great time—it was the biggest carp I’ve ever shot. Then I just got one other pretty good-sized one, so it’s been pretty good for me.”
Because of the six dams along the Upper Missouri—Gavins Point, Fort Randall, Big Bend and Oahe in South Dakota, plus two more upstream, not much of the river looks like it did in its wild state. But one natural stretch of the river, from Yankton to roughly Ponca State Park in Nebraska, looks much like it did when the first explorers came through. Duggan Smith oversees the recreational area from his office in Yankton—Smith says that adds a special charm for locals and visitors.
According to Smith, “If you figure the Missouri River is over 2600 miles long, and there’s only about a third of that is semi-natural; that’s broken up between Montana and a small part of North Dakota and our piece here in South Dakota, then people want to see that. And now that our part of the river, between Fort Randall Dam and Ponca State Park is a National Water Trail, people want to get on it, and they come from across the country to canoe and paddle on this river.”
Smith does say—the wild stretch of weather can prove a challenge to novice boaters and kayakers, and they need to take it seriously.
One of the most well-versed historians of the river is another Park Ranger, Joe Delveaux. He spends his summers as a park ranger covering the Missouri; the rest of the year, he’s working to share the river’s history in his teaching job at Vermillion High School. Delveaux says the river can teach students in almost any subject—from history and social studies, even math, to the first interactions between Native Americans and explorers.
Delveaux says “You can take it all the way back to the (tribes) who hunted this river, made their homes along the river, shortly after the Ice Age, thousands of years ago. You can take it back to Lewis and Clark in the early 1800’s, and their first engagement with the Yankton Sioux, and then all the different engagements they had with the different tribes as they made their way west toward the Pacific Ocean.”
From its port of entry north of Pollock in Campbell County, through Pierre and Fort Pierre, Chamberlain and Oacoma—the Missouri River unites and divides us; hydrates us and recreates us—and more than nearly every other state, is a vital, special part of home.