Lake Sakakawea

Lake Sakakawea spreads 178 miles (286 km) across western North Dakota, a reservoir of about 23.8 million acre-feet (29.4 km³) held back by Garrison Dam, one of the largest earthen dams in the world. The Army Corps of Engineers began the dam in 1947 under the Pick-Sloan Plan and closed the embankment in April 1953. The lake's name follows the Hidatsa spelling for Sakakawea, the young Lemhi Shoshone woman who traveled with Lewis and Clark after joining them at the Knife River villages, not far from today's shoreline.

For the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of the Fort Berthold Reservation, the dam was a catastrophe. The government took about 152,360 acres (617 km²) of the reservation's river bottomland, its best farmland, timber and winter shelter, and the rising water covered the tribal headquarters town of Elbowoods. Most reservation residents, by some counts about 90 percent, had to relocate. A 1948 photograph of tribal chairman George Gillette weeping as the land sale was signed became an emblem of the loss. Today the lake supports walleye fishing, irrigation and hydropower, and the Four Bears Bridge carries traffic across it at New Town.

• Fort Berthold Reservation
  Home of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation borders
• Lake Oahe
  A 231-mile Missouri River reservoir across the Dakotas flows into
• North Dakota
  The Peace Garden State, northern plains and badlands located in
• Bismarck
  Capital of North Dakota, on the Missouri River near
• The Missouri River
  The longest river in North America part of