The Missouri cuts through the middle of the area, gathering force as it goes. Its human use in this area is not for navigation but for energy and flood control as it transports of the melted snow of the eastern Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico. I took in two earthen dams that dominate the area and manage the human uses. Garrison Dam in North Dakota is two and a half miles across at the top and is the fourth largest earth-filled embankment dam in America. The Fort Peck Dam in Montana is four miles across and is the largest dam in America, earth-filled or otherwise. Because of their vast size, I didn't get any usable pictures of the dams. They both have spillways, but they are adjacent to the dams and are used only to keep flood waters from going over the tops of the dams. The spillway for the Fort Peck Dam has only been used to pass water downstream five times in 74 years. The Fort Peck Dam was started as an anti-depression Public Works Administration project in 1933. The Garrison Dam was started in 1947. Both were supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers and were built by hydraulically dredging the river and lake bottom both upstream and downstream from the dams. They are truly phenomenal engineering feats from another era.
I think they should rename Montana "Lewis and" and North Dakota "and Clark". From 1804 to 1806 they hauled themselves and the crew across this territory and back in answer to the question: "Is there any there there?" Of course there was, starting with a lot of Native American tribes who had been there a long time. The new natives, a lot of German-Americans and Irish-Americans and Scandinavian-Americans, have done exceptional job of remembering the Corps of Discovery's trek to there. L&C and corps spent the winter of 1804-05 with the Mandans near present-day Washburn, North Dakota. A non-profit foundation has established an interpretive center at that location, which has numerous artifacts from the period (though few things from the expedition itself) and it tells the expedition's story well. The interpretive center also described subsequent expeditions to the area by Prince Maximillan and by George Catlin. The prince was primarily interested in the botany, and Catlin was primarily interested in making pictures of the natives and the buffalo.
Here are some of George Catlin's pictures I liked:
I had my own up-close experience with buffalo when I camped overnight at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in west North Dakota. Two of them kept me company in the campground, which was otherwise not populated by humans. Because the temperature got down to 26 degrees, we were all primarily concerned with keeping warm.
The North Dakota badlands aren't as spectacular as the South Dakota badlands (which I haven't seen yet except in pictures), but they're still pretty special.
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| North Dakota Badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Section |
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| Little Missouri River, Theodore Roosevelt National Park |
And a small big horned sheep, which looked like it had been recently shorn.
The thing that struck me about Williston was its orderliness. In a lot of ways it looked like an Army post. Everything--trucks, trailers, equipment, pipe, was in orderly rows. The main architectural feature was the rectangular box, sans windows. There was a lot of mud and dust, but that can't be helped given the number of trucks. The one thing you don't see is any spilled oil. This is a very efficient operation.
Day 10 mileage: 222
Day 11 mileage: 317
Cumulative mileage: 3,434
