Garrison Dam
Lake Sakakawea is a reservoir on the Missouri River. It is the third largest man-made lake in the United States. Of man-made reservoirs in the USA, only Lake Mead and Lake Powell are larger.
It is located about 80 km (50 mi) from Bismarck, North Dakota; the distance by the river is about 120 km (75 mi). Lake Sakakawea marks the maximum southwest extent of glaciation during the ice age.
Garrison Dam
The reservoir was created with the completion of Garrison Dam in 1956, the second (and largest) of six main-stem dams on the Missouri River built and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control, hydroelectric power, navigation and irrigation. (The other five are Fort Peck, Oahe, Big Bend, Fort Randall and Gavins Point.)
Hydropower turbines at Garrison Dam have a generating capacity of 515 Megawatts of electricity. Their average production is 240 Megawatts, enough for several hundred thousand people.
The Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery is the world's largest walleye and northern pike producing facility and also works to restore endangered species, such as the pallid sturgeon.
The dam is between Riverdale and Pick City, North Dakota. Garrison, North Dakota is named after the dam. The creation of the lake displaced members of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, forcing the creation of New Town.
Lake Sakakawea State Park
Lake Sakakawea State Park is the western terminus of the 7,400 km (4,600 mi) North Country National Scenic Trail which is a National Millennium Trail that crosses northern rim of the continental United States to Port Henry, New York. The park was originally developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as Garrison Lake State Park. In 1965 the North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department assumed management of the park and renamed it Lake Sakakawea State Park in honor of the Shoshone/Hidatsa woman Sakakawea who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition up the Missouri River from Fort Mandan in April 1805.
Statistics
- Lake Surface area: 368,000 acres (1,500 km²)
- Lake Length: 178 miles long (286 km)
- Lake Shoreline: 1,300 miles (2,000 km) of shoreline
- Water storage: 23 million acre feet (28 km³)
- Garrison Dam Construction: 1947 - 1953; $300 million; 9 million truckloads of dirt; as 80,000 cubic yards (60,000 m³) of earth being moved daily.
- Dam length: 12,000 feet (3.6 km)
- Dam height: 210 feet (64 m)
- Dam Dedication: June 1953 by President Dwight Eisenhower.
External Links
- North Dakota Outdoors
- McLean County and
- article on the Garrison Dam
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