The most claustrophobic experience on water
By Katie Hunhoff
Boaters and adventurers often shy away from the shallow delta that is overtaking the Missouri River by Springfield in southeast South Dakota.
They worry about snags and stumps in the water. The ever-changing channel is confusing. Dozens of sandbars create a maze, and in many places the swamp grass is 10 feet high, making it impossible to see the hills of the shoreline that could provide bearings. Water depths vary from 12 feet to less than a foot.
Snakes, snapping turtles and other critters add to the mystique of a place like nowhere else in the American West.
We wouldn’t explore the delta with just anyone, but Greg Stockholm seemed reliable. Stockholm knows and loves the rivers of America. The tall, cheerful 67-year-old has boated much of the Missouri and Mississippi, as well as the Ohio and numerous other lakes and waterways.
But he’s especially at home on the delta. He boated the Missouri with his dad as a boy, when the reservoir known as Lewis and Clark Lake was sparkly new. Water then extended from shore to shore — more than a mile wide and deep enough for him and his friends to experiment with five-man pyramids on water skis. In 1977 he was skiing with a kite on Lake Poinsett when it sailed skyward and dropped him hard on the water. He was hospitalized for eight weeks, but he was back in a boat almost before his injuries healed.
As a youth, Stockholm watched his father, Alfred, build a 21-foot cabin cruiser. His earliest memories are of taking the wheel of the cruiser at age 4. In 2022 he began construction of a 72-foot sailboat that he hopes to launch near Sioux City, Iowa. His plan is to motor the boat to the ocean, raise its 80-foot mainsail and set off across the Atlantic.
Stockholm has operated a body shop for most of his adult life. In his spare time — between fixing cars and building the big sailboat — he still found time to restore a classic 1975 Tahiti jet boat with a 389-inch Pontiac engine.
“Half the boats around Springfield never get in the water here,” he says, because the owners are leery of the delta. We climb aboard the Tahiti at the boat docks on the east side of town. The big engine rattles to life, sending vibrations throughout the little black craft.
Just as we leave the docks and enter the delta, Stockholm points to the Eagle depth finder below the steering wheel of the Tahiti. It reads 6 feet.
“We’re in the main channel right here,” he says.
But then we enter a water alley between two sandbars and the big engine sputters. The propellor has hit sand. The Eagle says we are in a foot of water.
It’s not a problem. Stockholm shifts to “R” and we reverse into a few feet of water.
We’d imagined a delta of grassy sandbars with frogs, toads, crawdads, crabs, flying insects and patches of brackish mud. That’s not the South Dakota delta.
The water seems clean and fresh and there is little mud. It’s mostly sand below the water and on the islands or sandbars. Growing on nearly all the sand is a tall perennial grass called phragmites, an invasive species that is spreading to lakes and wetlands throughout eastern South Dakota. Unfortunately, it creates a dense, nearly impenetrable jungle that deer and other wildlife try to avoid. Phragmites even affects fish because the massive roots dry the marshland and reduce habitat for minnows, frogs and other small creatures.
Stockholm says the U.S. Corps of Engineers, overseer of the Missouri River valley, sends helicopters with herbicide sprayers to attack the phragmites infestation in the Springfield delta. Once the reeds die and turn white, the federal authorities sometimes burn the sandbars. Their goal is to eliminate all vegetation on the sandbars so the endangered piping plover will have better nesting conditions.
It would be nice if the herbicide, which has been approved for aquatic use by the EPA, would enable cattails, Russian olives and wild grasses to regain a foothold, but on our trip through the maze it appeared that the phragmites are winning the war with the Corps.
We saw few signs of wildlife. A lone deer peeked out of the reeds. A massive old snapping turtle, 2 feet in diameter, balanced on a stump in the water.
Stockholm says the river has quieted in his lifetime. “I remember lying awake in bed in our house in town and hearing the honking of geese all night long,” he says.
The throaty baritone of bullfrogs was a regular sound of summer. Beavers, muskrats and other wildlife added to the cacophony of the river. On our outing, there was nary a sound when Stockholm shut down the Pontiac engine.
Still, he says, this is a wild place. “The river is alive. You can never outguess it. It’s always changing, and it probably always will be.”
Two main channels of the old river can be found in the delta, one on the South Dakota side and another below the yellow chalkstone bluffs of Nebraska.
Stockholm sped up the Tahiti for a 7-mile zig-zag journey southwest on the river to the little fishing village of Running Water. Phragmites are there, too, lining the shore by the boat docks. Just beyond Running Water is the Standing Bear Bridge, a 3,000-foot crossing that gives motorists an expansive view of the delta.
West of Running Water is the town of Niobrara, Nebraska, and the mouth of the Niobrara River, which brings several million tons of sediment into Lewis and Clark Lake every year — creating the unusual delta that is slowly creeping eastward. Experts predict that the grassy delta — with its phragmites-laden sandbars — could reach Gavins Point Dam at Yankton if an affordable solution isn’t found.
The sediment is considered a scourge in South Dakota and Nebraska. Ironically, it is badly needed in the Gulf of Mexico where the coastline is disappearing due to erosion and rising sea levels. Before the six dams were built on the Missouri River in the 1940s and 1950s, sediment from the 2,341-mile Missouri — North America’s longest river — flowed unimpeded to the Gulf.
Now it lays above Gavins Point Dam.
Upon reaching the Standing Bear Bridge, Stockholm steered the Tahiti northeast and motored back toward Springfield. Moving with the current, the big motor had easy work. The sun was now at our backs and setting low over the delta. Blue herons began to show up along the shore. Sometimes, the graceful birds craned their long necks and stared. Just one other boat was on the water that night, so we were a rare sight. A curious crane took flight and followed us down the river.
“Sometimes I think they want to race the boat,” grinned Stockholm.
Other waterfowl appeared at sunset. A small flock of Canada geese flew in formation from the east.
When we arrived at Springfield, where we’d begun, Stockholm asked if we wanted to see where the delta ends and “the lake begins.” Of course, we did.
So we traveled east just a few miles — past another fishing village known as Apple Tree. A flock of perhaps 50 big white pelicans sat on a shallow ledge.
Stockholm pointed to the Nebraska shoreline, about a mile and a half away, and said he’s quite sure we could walk there. “I doubt the water is more than waist high all the way across.”
If the sediment continues to fill the lake, scientists say the delta will extend all the way to the Yankton dam, 15 miles away. The tallgrass phragmites will surely follow.
We rounded a sandbar and there was open water as far as we could see to the east — a fresh sight after spending hours in the claustrophobic delta.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
