In this part of the country, the Missouri River effectively divides the Midwest from the West. East of the River there is still a lot of farmland. The west side of the River is mainly ranch land.
The town of Chamberlain is a seemingly prosperous little community that caters to sportsmen, particularly fishermen and pheasant hunters. There is a large and pretty reservoir alongside the downtown area that attracts a lot of recreational boaters in the warm weather months.
The dams that have been built along the river in the last 60 years have fundamentally changed the character of the river that Lewis and Clark traveled. The Army Corps of Engineers built the dams to help control flooding and works hard to maintain a navigable channel for barge traffic beneath Yankton, the site of the first dam.
Despite all the Army Corps of Engineers' calculations and hard work, there was serious flooding below the dams in 2011. Everyone I talked to insisted that the floods were caused by errors in judgement (I am paraphrasing here) by the Army Corps of Engineers. Somebody, of course, has to take the blame when bad things happen...
In 1904, the Missouri River was a meandering river with many channels, sandbars and backwaters that was constantly flooding and changing course. The current was not nearly as swift as it is today.
This, I guess, is South Dakota's counterpart to Paul Bunyan. Good to see that he is a cyclist!
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