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The Missouri River begins in the Rocky Mountains and travels 2500 miles (including headstreams) to the Gulf of Mexico, draining 580,000 sq. miles. Native Americans have occupied its shores and used it as a transportation corridor for over 10,000 years. While traveling down the Mississippi River in 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet noted the mouth of the Missouri. Pierre Gaultier de Verendrye, a Canadian explorer, visited the upper reaches of the Missouri in 1738. David Thompson, a Canadian fur trader, explored the area around the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota in 1797. By the Louisiana Treaty of 1803, the U.S. purchased the drainage area, more or less, of the Missouri River from France. The Lewis and Clark Expedition found 50 Native American nations in its journeys on the river from 1804 to 1806. They also found fur trappers heading upriver even as they returned to St. Louis. The first steamboat traveled upriver in 1819, and was followed by hundreds more, traveling upriver as far as Fort Benton, Montana. Construction approval in 1933 for the Fort Peck Dam initiated major dam construction for hydropower and water control above Sioux City, Iowa. Today, there are seven major dams upriver of the city. Because these dams have no locks, Sioux City is the head of navigation on the river. The gallery for the Missouri River begins at "Lewis' Source", which Meriwether Lewis on August 12, 1805 thought "the most distant fountain of the waters of the mighty Missouri in surch [sic] of which we have spent so many toilsome days and wristless [sic] nights." The images then continue downriver. |
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David Lincoln. All rights reserved. Images
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