Missouri River Recovery Program: Missouri River Basin

Authors

Date of this Version

2009

Comments

Published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2009) 1-8

Abstract

The Missouri River, the nation’s longest, travels more than 2,300 miles from Three Forks, Montana, to join the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Missouri. For centuries, the river has served as the center of life for the inhabitants of North America’s Great Plains. Following exploration and mapping by Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery in the early 1800s, the Missouri River became the gateway to the West.

Historically, the dynamic and untamed Missouri River has produced violent floods in the spring and summer with erosive forces that ate away its banks and turned its waters the color of mud.

Since Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition, the Army Engineers have had very close ties to the Missouri River. Over the years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been charged by Congress to remove snags, protect banks, construct navigation channels and build flood risk management structures (levees and dams) on the Missouri River to provide social and economic benefits to the nation. Some of these development activities on the Missouri River have come at the expense of the river’s native fish and wildlife.