Two islands lie near Pierre — Farm Island and LaFramboise. They’re most popular in fair weather, when visitors most comfortably enjoy their lush nature, varied wildlife and miles of hiking. But snow and ice lend a different perspective to their beauty. Photos by Lance Bertram.
Our September/October issue includes a feature on the Belle Fourche River valley. Butte County is a West River oasis, thanks to the Belle Fourche Irrigation District, a century-old project that can be traced back to 1885. Bernie Hunhoff took several photos in the area last summer while working on the story. Here are some that didn’t make the magazine.
Our November/December issue includes a story on the clever characters in Springfield. The Missouri River town has been through more highs and lows than most South Dakota communities, but the overall effect has not squelched the town’s spirit or creativity. South Dakota Magazine sent intern Chloe Kenzy, editor-at-large Bernie Hunhoff and his grandson, Steven, to visit the folks who help give Springfield its unique personality. Here are some of Hunhoff’s photos that didn’t make the magazine.
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| There’s beauty all along the 420-mile Big Sioux River, but it is consistently among the most imperiled rivers in the country. Photo by Greg Latza. |
YOU NEED NOT talk long with Morris Kirkegaard to understand his passion for the Big Sioux River. He and his wife, Diane, have operated the River of the Double Bend Campground and Canoe Outfitters along the river in the small Moody County town of Trent for a dozen years. But Kirkegaard has spent much of his 64 years a stone’s throw away from the Big Sioux.”In high school my friends and I spent days on the river,” he recalls.”We made a boat every summer. Then we’d forget about it during the winter and lose it in the spring flood. For me, it was the perfect place to grow up. And I want my grandson to experience some of that.”
He and his grandson share a passion for collecting fossils. Last summer, they excavated the bones of a giant ancient lizard from the Big Sioux’s muddy banks. The temperatures were below zero when we spoke in January, but there was pride in his voice when he said,”It’s winter now, so it’s very clear. You can see straight down to the bottom.”
Then, his voice trailing, he added,”But it turns like chocolate milk every spring.”
That’s a far cry from the upbeat entry that Frenchman Joseph Nicollet, exploring for the U.S. government, recorded when he first laid eyes upon the Big Sioux in July 1838. Modern-day river rats might scoff at Nicollet’s summertime description of a”stream of clear, swift-running water meandering across an immense prairie whose vegetation is better supplied and more varied and where the land seems disposed to provide all the agricultural needs for a civilized society.” Nicollet clearly observed the river’s pebbly bottom, and abundant fresh-water clams and mollusks. If any clams clung to the bottom today, they would be obscured by murky brown water or perhaps dislodged by the scrap iron that volunteers regularly fish out of the river.
Nearly 200 years of settling the Great Plains has changed the Big Sioux from the picturesque brook of Nicollet’s day into a river that advocacy group Environment America declared the 13th dirtiest river in America in 2012. But there are armies of South Dakotans who live along the Big Sioux, who use it for recreation, or who simply want to make it cleaner for their grandchildren, that are trying to fix it. The biggest question they face is whether or not their efforts are in vain. If they are, it may be time for South Dakotans to re-evaluate the ways they use the river.
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| South Dakota’s largest city rose around the falls of the Big Sioux River, which first attracted town-builders in the 1850s. Photo by Greg Latza. |
The Big Sioux River begins at a pond in Roberts County, about a mile and a half north of Summit, and flows 419 miles south, through nine counties, emptying into the Missouri River at Sioux City. The river snakes through three of our five largest cities — Watertown, Brookings and Sioux Falls — making it the most heavily populated river basin in South Dakota. But most of the 5,382 square miles it drains in South Dakota, plus another 3,000 in Iowa, is agricultural land. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, in its biannual water quality reports, says the primary pollutants in the Big Sioux are agricultural runoff — waste from livestock grazing too closely to the river and herbicides and pesticides that trickle across the rolling East River farmland directly into the river –wildlife and wet weather discharges from small towns.
“The river we have today is a reflection of how we use the land in eastern South Dakota,” says Jay Gilbertson, manager of the East Dakota Water Development District headquartered in Brookings.”We live in an agricultural state. Sioux Falls is there, but the rest of South Dakota, and huge parts of the Big Sioux river basin, are farm ground, ranches and pasture.”
Agriculture as we know it did not exist in the Upper Plains when European explorers first established contact with the Big Sioux over 300 years ago. A map published in Paris in 1701 is one of the earliest documents to mention the Big Sioux. It shows a fur trader’s trail from the falls of the Big Sioux River to Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi River. The area was a rendezvous for Indians and French fur traders. Jean Baptiste Trudeau passed the river’s mouth in 1794 before building Pawnee House, the first trading post on the Upper Missouri, near modern day Fort Randall. Nicollet first encountered the river a few miles west of present day Brookings late on the afternoon of July 7, 1838 and followed it to its source, noting the clarity of lakes Oakwood, John, Albert and Poinsett.
The Homestead Act of 1862 brought thousands of settlers to Dakota. Through the early 1900s, they introduced domestic livestock to roam the once wild prairie and transformed other sections into a patchwork of row crops. As farming operations grew, Gilbertson says government offices and colleges encouraged farmers to build feedlots on hillsides so that spring rains would wash waste downstream to a destination out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Citizens in new towns along the river shared that mentality for their own sewage.”The assumption was that there was always going to be enough water,” Gilbertson says.”At some point, there’s no longer enough fresh water in the river to dilute the effluent that is going into it. I think people were concerned, but it wasn’t at the top of the list.”
Then the environmental movement gained traction in the 1950s, and people paid closer attention to the health of their waterways. In 1972 Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which sought to control pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams. To comply with its provisions the Big Sioux is divided into 17 segments, each with a set of prescribed uses. Pollutant levels are monitored in each section, and the state compiles a biannual report to determine the river’s compliancy with federal requirements in each segment.
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| Paddlers encounter farmland, wooded areas and rugged red quartzite canyons. Photo by Greg Latza. |
The river above Sioux Falls received good marks in the 2012 report. Only two stretches — one near Lake Kampeska and another between Willow Creek and Stray Horse Creek in Codington and Hamlin counties — exceeded the maximum levels of E. coli and fecal coliform allowed under federal standards. But the river from Sioux Falls to Sioux City contains such high levels of E. coli, fecal coliform and total suspended solids that portions aren’t safe for fish or limited human contact, and swimming is prohibited along the entire route. The outlook is not sunny.”I have not seen anything in our ability to affect the kind of change that will be necessary to get within that total immersion standard,” Gilbertson says.
South Dakota is chiefly an agricultural state, but farmers should not be viewed as the lone villains behind the Big Sioux’s plight.”No one of us is responsible for a big problem, but collectively we bear the burden,” Gilbertson says.”We would all like to see a riparian corridor along the river.”
Lisa Richardson, executive director of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association, argues that farmers depend upon clean water perhaps more than anyone because it directly affects their livelihood. She says technological advances like variable rate technology, which uses satellites to map cropland, allows farmers to apply fertilizer and other chemicals more conservatively. The association had planned to hire a water quality consultant in 2012, but the prolonged drought negatively affected the organization’s budget, which relies on yields,”Water quality and water management affects every farmer out there, so we’ll continue to emphasize that,” Richardson says.
And then there’s Sioux Falls, South Dakota’s largest city, with 160,000 people. The city has had a turbulent relationship with its namesake river since being founded in 1856. Homesteaders were drawn to its signature falls, where every second 7,400 gallons of water gush down 100 feet of Sioux quartzite thought to be billions of years old. City founder Richard Pettigrew sought to harness that immense power in a flourmill, the remnants of which can still be seen at Falls Park. He also led a group of investors who established a stockyard and meat packing plant that became one of the first industrial polluters of the river when they dumped its waste directly into the water.
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| Members of the South Dakota Canoe and Kayak Association focus their summertime cleanups on the Big Sioux River. |
According to Gary Olson’s history of Sioux Falls, by 1920 businesses and many homes were connected to city sewer lines that fed waste into the Big Sioux. In especially dry summers, the amount of sewage from residences, business and the John Morrell meatpacking plant, which opened in 1909, equaled or exceeded the amount of water available to carry it away.
The city addressed that problem by building a sewage treatment plant in 1927. Still, when researchers collected river samples in 1972 for a national study, they found bacteria levels thousands of times greater than acceptable standards. The treatment plant and Morrell’s shouldered the blame.
Sioux Falls has made strides to embrace the river through its River Greenway Project in the 1970s and more recent improvements around Falls Park. But in 2010 the city was forced to dump 65 million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage into the river when heavy spring rains overwhelmed the sewer systems. And in 2011 Morrell’s was cited for three years of waste discharge violations. The city paid $10,877 in fines, and has spent millions since on sewer system upgrades. Morrell’s paid $44,079.
The Big Sioux’s pollution problems have been well known for decades, particularly to members of the South Dakota Canoe and Kayak Association. The club began in Sioux Falls in the late 1980s, but canoeists favored regular trips to West River waterways over the river running through their own territory.”It was considered a mess,” says Jarett Bies, the association’s president.”Part of the reason they went to the Cheyenne or the Grand was because it was cleaner, and there wasn’t as much agricultural runoff.”
The diminished water quality does not preclude club members today from cruising any portions of the Big Sioux, but they do take precautions.”If it’s a hot day, we don’t stop at some point and have everyone take a swim,” Bies says.”That’s something fun you can do on the Missouri River, but that’s part of the knowledge base among locals. You can use it for recreation, but I don’t think they would swim in it.”
Rather than avoid the problems, members host regular cleanups in the Big Sioux. They’ve discovered that the water is not just dirty chemically. It’s also full of garbage. Men and women walk portions of the river, pulling debris-filled canoes in their wake.”Last fall when we were working on Skunk Creek (a tributary that flows through Sioux Falls), we fished out bicycles, old air conditioners, tires, lots of metal debris,” Bies says.
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| The Big Sioux flows through Good Earth State Park at Blood Run, where naturalist Ed Raventon leads tours. |
So what’s the solution behind this decades-old problem? Millions of dollars have been spent on upgrades to water treatment facilities and waste management systems to little avail. Some might wonder if it’s worth the effort since we’ll never have the same river Nicollet found in 1838.”If your standard is pristine waters, you’re never going to get there,” Gilbertson says.”Things that we are doing now that we expect to do on a regular basis would have to stop. That kind of an expectation isn’t terribly realistic. We need to find a balance between making use of the land in ways that we feel is appropriate while minimizing the adverse impacts on other things that we would prefer to preserve.”
Gilbertson and other clean water advocates may have discovered a way to do just that. About 10 years ago, the East Dakota Water Development District was monitoring samples from a portion of Bachelor Creek, a tributary of the Big Sioux near Trent in Moody County. Results were mixed for years, but oddly the samples began improving. They discovered the farmer who owned pasture on both sides of the creek had enrolled the land in the Conservation Reserve Program.”Just taking a half-mile of riverbank out of constant use as a pasture led to a pretty dramatic change,” Gilbertson says.”It’s a small stream, but it can happen.”
That led to joint program between East Dakota and the Northern Prairies Land Trust to create buffer zones by enrolling land within 150 feet of the river in 30-year or perpetual easements, removing it from production. Jerry Kiihl was among the first farmers to enroll. He placed 36.5 riverfront acres about a mile south of Castlewood in a permanent easement in December 2007, and now has 75 acres protected.”The quality of the river has improved greatly,” Kiihl says.”This was a good way to protect the river environment forever. Some of the banks had eroded over time. They’ve moved 20 to 25 feet further in than they were 30 years ago.
The native grasses have started to come back. You see more big bluestem. And the grass has helped wildlife habitat. There are more ducks and pheasants.”
Kiihl has become an advocate for easements, and has helped convince several of his Hamlin County neighbors to participate. Jim Madsen, of the Northern Prairies Land Trust’s Watertown office, says 625 riverside acres are protected through easements.”We know we’re making an impact,” Madsen says.”Just how much is hard to say. Honestly, we need to create a buffer up and down the entire Big Sioux River. It’s possible, but so much depends on whether or not the funding is there.”
That’s music to the ears of river advocates like Morris Kirkegaard and Jay Gilbertson.”You can do almost anything on the other side of that buffer, and short of a major catastrophe very little of what happens is going to get into the river,” Gilbertson says.
Kirkegaard has already placed 20 acres of farmland he owns near Trent into an easement program and hopes to have 80 total acres enrolled by the end of 2013. If results further upriver hold true, swimmers might find themselves once again splashing in the Big Sioux’s southern reaches. A cleaner river would benefit the farmers living along it, kayakers who cruise it, and grandfathers and grandsons who hunt its banks for ancient sea creatures.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
Editor’s Note: Almost 64 years ago — before bulldozers dammed the Missouri and changed the river forever — two Sioux Falls men assembled a wooden raft and floated from Mobridge to Pierre. Durand Young and Tom Kilian wanted a last look at the wild waterway traveled by Lewis and Clark and other famous explorers. Kilian, a longtime education and community leader and founder of Kilian Community College, died in April 2014 at age 90. Young, a South Dakota journalist and executive with AAA, passed away in 2013 at age 86. In 1995, the two adventurers dug out their notes, journals and photographs and wrote this story about their five days on the river.
Aug. 3, 1956, 10:54 a.m.: Underway from point on east bank of Missouri, one-half mile south of highway bridge. Difficult to get raft in water. Difficult to steer for west side channel.
1:20 p.m.: Passed east tip of Blue Blanket Island.
So begins the official log of our five-day journey by raft down the Missouri River from Mobridge to Pierre. It was a memorable trek by two then-young native South Dakotans with a serious historical bent and a dash of Huckleberry Finn derring-do.
1956 marked the 150th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s return trip to St. Louis. At the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, the explorers had gone up the Missouri in 1804, spent the winter in what would become central North Dakota, and then continued upstream to the origins of the Missouri, crossed the Rocky Mountains and descended the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. After an uncomfortable winter of 1805-06 on the Oregon coast, they completed their historic exploration of the Louisiana Purchase and returned to St. Louis.
We scheduled our raft trip to commemorate that anniversary year, hoping to stop at night near some of the same campsites Lewis and Clark had recorded 150 years before. And there would be little time left to see the Missouri as the explorers and their party had experienced it. The giant Oahe Dam would soon close off the riverbed and eventually pile up to 200 feet of water over the landscape from Pierre to Bismarck, N.D.
We spent many evening hours planning the trip — securing and studying old river maps and reviewing the Lewis and Clark journals and stories of other early travelers on the Missouri as well as designing our 8-by-12-foot raft. Determined to experience the river in its natural state, we disdained a motor. The free flowing current would be our power and, as we found out along the way, would sometimes play master to our slave.
Having made some previous historic site searches under primitive conditions, we knew something of the logistical needs. However, the constraints of our jobs and families limited the time available to make the trip.
We arranged for Raymond Rheborg, a pickup-owning cousin, to transport us from Fort Pierre to Mobridge very early the morning of August 3. He left us, bag and baggage, on the riverbank around 7 a.m. and we flew at the task of assembling the pre-cut pieces of the raft frame. Twenty penny spikes fastened the green cottonwood 2-by-8s and steel cable secured four sealed 30-gallon steel drum floats in frame pockets at the corners. As soon as the plywood deck was nailed down, we piled our tools, tent, large water cans, blankets, food and other gear amidships and pushed off the bank.
Exhilarated to be afloat, and with the raft well balanced and riding high, we worked our way toward the west side of the river, where the main current flowed. A long, stout pike pole was used to push off from the river bottom and, when the water was too deep for that, we managed to row clumsily with a paddle fashioned from a piece of board.
By mid-afternoon we were having trouble staying in the main channel. When we drifted out of its stronger current, our downstream progress slowed drastically, and eventually we would begin to bump and drag on the bottom in shallow water. As we struggled to keep our cumbersome craft floating in deeper and swifter water, learning to “read the river” far ahead became a priority in positioning ourselves to avoid trouble. We learned how varied shadings of light on the water’s surface translated into varying depths in the river and we learned to “see” trouble ahead. As the river bends, the main channel moves from side to side and our limited ability to propel the raft laterally dictated early action and hard, hard work with our crude paddle and pike pole to stay in swift water.
Our first afternoon wore into evening. Our preoccupation with steering and navigation meant we had not been able to erect our pup tent on deck and get the rest of our gear squared away. Dusk came, then darkness, and our ponderous raft was riding a good current along the west bank of the river.
The river bank for several miles, however, was four to 10 feet in height , a sheer, vertical cut bank with nothing we could tie up to and no shore at water’s edge to beach the raft securely for the night. This presented a clear danger as we could barely distinguish that high bank from the dark of the night sky and could see hardly at all ahead of us. Flashes of lightning from an oncoming storm enabled us to see, in quick glimpses, what lay ahead.
We desperately needed a safe place to moor for the night. By 10:30 the lightning and thunder foretold a major thunderstorm. Finally we were swept into shallower, slower-moving water and grounded on a sandbar. With the temperature cool for an August night and the wind freshening, we got off and pushed the heavy raft as best we could. The storm was now upon us. Bumping along on the sandy bottom, we finally ran aground in a tiny inlet amidst lightning, heavy wind and lashing hail.
In the dark and confusion our maps blew overboard and carried away. We lay, spread-eagled, on top of the rest of our equipment to keep anything else from blowing away and covered ourselves with the canvas tent. From 11 p.m. till 1 a.m. we slept fitfully, fearful we might begin to drift again.
The rain finally eased and the wind dropped. Feeling somewhat safer, but soaking wet and very cold, we “slept in” till around 4 a.m. and then got up, thoroughly uncomfortable. A driftwood fire in our tin camp stove brought warmth and hot bacon and eggs. We pushed off again.
Morning light had shown us we were in a secondary channel between a huge sandbar and the west bank of the river. At 8:15 we passed the downstream tip of the bar and merged with the main channel and faster current once again. The warming sun soon lifted our spirits. We talked with an Indian man on the west bank who told us we were but a few miles from Cheyenne Agency, which meant we were farther along than we had supposed.
About an hour later we were stopped dead in the water, hung up on a partially submerged cottonwood log — a sawyer, the legendary nemesis of steamboat pilots. It projected just above the surface at an acute angle. Because of the tremendous pressure of the current pushing us up the sloping log, the threat of having to abandon the raft and most of our equipment was very real. But rocking the raft and shifting our cargo prevailed and we finally slipped free. Such hazards and others were frequent throughout the journey, but we managed to avoid most of them by determined paddling and poling.
A curious feature of the river, still unexplained, were the “boilers,” sudden upsurges of water rising from 6 to 18 inches above the surface like giant air bubbles seeking escape from the water.
At 4:50 the second afternoon we passed beneath the old highway bridge at Whitlock Crossing. By 7:30, having had supper on board, we were moving in midstream, working our way toward shore and a hoped-for safe mooring a few miles below Cheyenne Agency. Another storm was approaching.
We landed on a sandbar at 8:30 and tied up to two large logs with the raft setting on a mud bottom. High winds and a bit of rain hit us again, but this time we were prepared. Our tent, erected on deck, kept us dry and comfortable.
The hot, burning sun of daytime hours, magnified by reflections off the river, and the strenuous physical effort needed to maintain our forward progress left us ready to sleep at night. The hard work notwithstanding, we spent much time observing the passing scenery — the land and sky, wildlife and plant life. Majestic great blue herons, magpies, hawks, buzzards and eagles were our companions, as well as the usual small prairie and shore birds. To lift the spirit, what can compare with a meadowlark’s song?
Our movement on the river’s surface caused little or no concern to wild animals, though we learned the sound of the warning slap of beaver tails on the water. Except for the sound of birds’ and coyotes’ nighttime chorus, there was no noise save the little we made. Fox, coyote, deer, antelope, beaver, muskrat and skunk were unperturbed, as were the many cattle grazing near the banks. At one point we exchanged close-up stares with a badger drinking at water’s edge.
We fished daily, routinely, without any luck. Four decades ago the Missouri ‘s water was far from the clear blue and green of today. Instead, it was a muddy brown, said to be too thick to drink and too thin to plow. That, along with its untamed power and unpredictable ways, was about to come to an end. Oahe and the other great South Dakota dams — Big Bend, Fort Randall and Gavins Point — would permanently change its color and its unique character.
Our third morning found us drifting near the east bank, and as morning wore on, the landscape became more rugged.
August, in those pre-dam years, was a time of low water on the Missouri. While summer storms brought needed moisture to the prairie grasslands, little of it ran off into the draws, ravines and creeks that split the land. Most of the creek mouths we passed were dry.
Riverbanks often rose steeply above the summer water level. The high banks showed clearly the effects of much higher currents of spring and early summer. There were frequent trees hanging by their roots from current-eroded banks, their trunks and branches extending into the water just where the fastest current flowed. We called them “sweepers,” for they could sweep our raft clean, down to its deck, unless we were alert to spot them ahead and to succeed in maneuvering around them. That was not always certain and never easy. One time, all our strength and a large measure of luck were required to free ourselves from a particularly hazardous tangle of tree branches and flotsam, in which we were held by a swift current.
Late in the afternoon of our third day we neared the entrance to the Little Bend. There a party of men and boys in two aluminum canoes passed us, heading downriver. It was a Boy Scout group from Miller. Jim Graham, one of the leaders, said they had put in at LeBeau and were headed for Pierre.
At 7:30 we moored to a heavy log on what was then the south bank of the river. Another storm was in prospect, but we were spared the worst of it. A brilliant lightning display and a brief wind squall with no rain allowed a good night’s sleep.
Next morning we rose at 5:15 and were under way at 5:38, choosing to prepare breakfast on board as we drifted on through the Little Bend. Our small tin stove mounted on the stern was a great convenience. The sky was patched with clouds and a few raindrops fell as we ate. For another of countless times we went aground on a sandbar but, jumping overboard, we worked our way off with little trouble. A fresh, cool breeze gave temporary relief from the daily August heat and broiling sun.
Passing the mouth of the Cheyenne River, we spoiled a group of nine tents on a high slope along its south bank. It was headquarters for an archaeological survey party. As plans for the system of dams on the Missouri were developed, a salvage archaeology program was undertaken by the Smithsonian Institution to sample locations of historic and prehistoric significance — Indian villages and burial grounds, fur trade posts and military sites.
That afternoon a strong wind from the southeast pushed us toward the west bank, away from the deeper and swifter current. We pushed and paddled steadily for several hours to keep our raft moving downstream. Evening promised yet another storm and once again we were running along a high bank, this one of caving sand and clay, with no place to tie up. Finally, at 8:15 we moored to a sheltered log amidst light rain, continuing thunder and lightning. Nonetheless, we turned in by 9 o’clock and had a restful night.
Next morning we wasted no time, resuming the trip at 5:14. Two hours later we were caught in shallow water along a large sandbar. Standing in the water, we had to heave and tug on the raft to get through. We then clawed our way across the current to the main channel near the east bank. By mid-morning we were paddling constantly to keep from being swept into fallen trees and snags.
Early in the afternoon the flattop of Oahe Dam came into view. We were proceeding southeast on a rapid current, but a strong southeast wind countered much of our speed. At 3:10 we passed the head of Wood Island. The dam cuts across the lower portion of Wood Island, and the remainder now lies deep beneath the surface of the reservoir.
A V-shaped opening in the nearly closed dam marked our passage. Heavy earth-moving machines, dwarfed by the massive dam structure, were busy narrowing the cut with huge loads of rocks and dirt, the main flow of the river having been diverted through a temporary channel that made an end run around the west side of the dam. We passed through at 4:25, still fighting the southeast wind.
It was nearly three hours later when we floated beneath the old Highway 14 bridge connecting Pierre and Fort Pierre. As we moored our craft to two huge cottonwoods at the north edge of Fort Pierre a few minutes later, another thunderstorm was building in the west.
Those days on the river — the Old Missouri, before it was corralled and calmed by the Corps of Engineers — will never be forgotten. In those days the river simply went its way, eating up land here and spitting it out to form new land somewhere else. It served up catfish, bullhead, occasional northern pike, needle-like gar, prehistoric-looking sturgeon and other species to the relatively few who fished its turbid, snag-filled waters.
We were among the last to see it and its quiet, serene border lands before boat ramps, marinas, camping sites, resorts and bait shops came. The price of viewing it as we did was hard work in the burning August sun and nightly thunderstorms. Yet we found time to reflect on those who had gone before: Lewis and Clark, Manuel Lisa, Hugh Glass, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., George Catlin, Prince Maximilian and, before them, the Sioux, Mandans, Arikaras and Yanktons. We thought about them and the many others — fur traders, explorers, vagabonds — whose highway had been the Missouri.
Around sundown, cross-legged on deck, as we made coffee over driftwood fires and sipped it from tin cups, we were stilled by the beauties of sunset, lightning and the sparkling, star-filled night sky, each of which confirmed our role as a part of it all.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1995 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
How do you find a star in a cottonwood twig? What’s the most ferocious winged predator of the plains? Kids discovered the answers to those questions and many more at the very first Missouri River Outdoor Expo in Yankton’s Riverside Park. Local Boy Scouts organized the event, which featured a hands-on look at the flora and fauna of the mighty Missouri. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
Michele Richter shared these photos of the Missouri River near Minneconjou, Little Bend and South Whitlock recreation areas. Richter grew up in Lake Andes and currently lives in Spearfish. She fell in love with photography after taking a course at Black Hills State University. “I have a love of landscape and nature photography, but really if something catches my eye…watch out,” Richter jokes. Visit this link to see more of her work or purchase prints.
Tommie Fantine Lauer shared these photos from a trip to Brandon and Garretson. Lauer was born in Sioux Falls and currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. You may view and download more of her photos here.
Now the historic bridge will be a pathway for joggers and walkers, baby carriages, bicyclists, skateboarders and the like. It is the longest pedestrian bridge in the USA that connects two states over a major river. The Newport Bridge, an 1896 railroad bridge that links Kentucky and Cincinnati, had that distinction until today. It is 2,670 feet long, and was redone for foot traffic about a decade ago. The Meridian easily surpasses it at 3,013 feet. The third longest is a new structure, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, built to connect Omaha with Council Bluffs, Iowa. It measures 2,224 feet.
Today at 3 p.m. the Meridian Bridge will be re-opened to the public after being closed for three years. But the bridge will never see another 18-wheeler … and it isn’t even likely to carry a compact car.
Eventually, Yanktonians and Nebraskans hope that walking/biking paths will connect the Meridian Bridge to the bridge over Gavins Point Dam, about four miles to the west. A path already exists on the South Dakota side, and Nebraska officials are making plans for theirs. The 12-mile loop would instantly become one of the most unique trails in the USA, taking hikers and bikers past eagle roosts, quaint restaurants, a sailing marina, small farms and forested river bottom. City officials in Yankton also hope to design and build an attractive plaza at the foot of the bridge.
The Meridian is one of the very few double-decker bridges in the nation. It took its name from the Meridian Highway (US Hwy 81) that cuts through the Americas from Winnipeg to Panama City. Yankton citizens took it upon themselves to fund and build the bridge in 1924 because they thought state officials were too slow in getting the project started. They paid for it with tolls until the debt was retired in 1953.
The bottom deck was intended for rail traffic, but a north-south train route to Yankton never materialized, so officials sent northbound traffic on the top and southbound traffic below. Its classic towers were designed with hydraulic lifts to allow ships to pass underneath. However, ships have been as rare as trains.
Cars and trucks traveled the bridge to the tune of 5,000 or more a day until a new bridge was completed in 2008. Historians on both sides of the river objected to having the old bridge destroyed. In fact, local leaders agreed that they would settle for a plain design on the new bridge so long as the savings were directed to preserving the Meridian as a footbridge.
So beginning this Thanksgiving week, after a very long wait and $4 million or more of your tax dollars, the old Meridian will once again carry traffic. Now you can walk on the Missouri without getting your feet wet.
We hope to see you there.
