Photo above: Canoers on the banks of the Missouri River. Courtesy National Park Service. Right: Huge metal sculpture of Sacagawea overlooking the Missouri River at the Nebraska Visitor Center, 2024. Courtesy America's Best History.

Missouri National Recreational River Then

For twelve thousand years, the indigenous people of the plains had used a nomadic lifestyle surrounding the Missouri River and the large buffalo herds that roamed the prairies and mountains around it. Along its entire route, the major tribes included the Otoe, Missouria, Omaha, Ponca, Brulé, Lakota, Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, Assiniboine, Gros Ventres, and Blackfeet. In Yankton, the Yankton Sioux tribe known as IhaÆžktoÆžwaÆž Dakota Oyate were located; albeit controlling a small area of the river and countryside. Also part of the territory of the Missouri National Recreational River were the Ponca. Surrounding much of the area were also the Crow Creek. On the Nebraska side of the river in the area were also the Ponca, as well as the Yankton Sioux.

Once France sold the lands along the Missouri River to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, for 3 cemts per acre, total $15 million, an exploration of the territory would have to take place. The best known, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, included thirty-three men in three boats. They were to find a passage, hopefully by river, from the known Missouri River to the known Columbia River in Oregon. It would take two years and the assistance of a Lemhi Shoshone woman known as Sacagawea, a teenager.

Photo above: Lewis and Clark reach a Shoshone Camp led by Sacagawea, 1918, Charles Marion Russell. Courtesy Gilcrest Museum via Wikipedia Commons. Camp would have been outside the Missouri National Recreational River area, however it shows the approach that Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark made with the tribes along the way. Below: Beautiful fall scene from a distance of the Missouri River. Courtesy National Park Service.

Missouri National Recreational River Now

Today, the National River is divided into two sections; the first, begun in 1978, 59 miles between Gavins Point Dam and Ponca State Park. The second, in 1991, added a 39 mile section from Fort Randall Dam and Niobrara, Nebraska. The stretch of river in the park is the only undammed and unchanneled section south of Montana. There are recreation parks along the one hundred miles, including state parks Ponca and Niobrara, plus U.S. Army Corps of Engineer sites. You can camp, fish, hike, boat all along the river, and learn the history of the area, both natural and Lewis and Clark historic, at many of the Visitor Centers.

And if the water is low, there's even a shipwreck here, the steamer North Alabama. But don't think they were the only boats that had problems with the changing currents of the Missouri. Over three hundred ships were wrecked in its currents from 1819 to 1920.

Minute Walk in History

Get a view of one hundred miles of the middle Missouri River where for twelve thousands years native American tribes such as the Punca and Yankton Sioux led their nomadic life amongst the buffalo that provided for them. It is also the river where history was made, albeit European style, when President Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition, with great help by Shoshoni guide Sacagawea.