The Oahe Dam is a large earthen

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, a ...

on the Missouri River, just north of

Pierre Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The dam creates

Lake Oahe Lake Oahe () is a large reservoir behind Oahe Dam on the Missouri River; it begins in central South Dakota and continues north into North Dakota in the United States. The lake has an area of and a maximum depth of . By volume, it is the List of l ...

, the fourth-largest man-made

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

in the United States. The reservoir stretches up the course of the Missouri to

Bismarck, North Dakota Bismarck () is the capital of the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Burleigh County. It is the state's second-most populous city, after Fargo. The city's population was 73,622 in the 2020 census, while its metropolitan popula ...

. The dam's power plant provides electricity for much of the north-central United States. It is named for the Oahe Indian Mission established among the Lakota Sioux in 1874. The project provides

flood control Flood control methods are used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters."Flood Control", MSN Encarta, 2008 (see below: Further reading). Flood relief methods are used to reduce the effects of flood waters or high water level ...

, hydropower generation,

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow Crop, crops, Landscape plant, landscape plants, and Lawn, lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,00 ...

, and

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...

benefits. Oahe Dam is one of six Missouri River mainstem dams, the next dam upstream is

Garrison Dam Garrison Dam is an earth-fill embankment dam on the Missouri River in central North Dakota, U.S. Constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1947 to 1953, at over in length, the dam is the fifth-largest earthen dam in the world. The res ...

, near

Riverdale, North Dakota Riverdale is a town in McLean County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 223 at the 2020 census. Riverdale was the largest of the construction camps that sprang up in 1946 to house workers building the Garrison Dam just to the west ...

, and the next dam downstream is

Big Bend Dam Big Bend Dam is a major embankment rolled-earth dam on the Missouri River in Central South Dakota, United States, creating Lake Sharpe. The dam was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Pick-Sloan Plan for Missouri wa ...

, near

Fort Thompson, South Dakota Fort Thompson is a census-designated place (CDP) in Buffalo County, South Dakota, Buffalo County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 1,282 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, making it the largest settlement on the Crow Cr ...

South Dakota Highway 204 South Dakota Highway 204 (SD 204) is a short east-west state highway in central South Dakota. It serves as a crossing of the Missouri River, running directly overtop of the Oahe Dam. Route description SD 204 begins in Stanley County at an in ...

runs directly atop the Oahe Dam, providing an automobile crossing of the Missouri river at the dam.

History

In September and October 1804, the

Lewis and Clark Expedition The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select gro ...

passed through what is now Lake Oahe while exploring the Missouri River. The Oahe Dam was authorized by the

Flood Control Act of 1944 The Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 (P.L. 78–534), enacted in the 2nd session of the 78th Congress, is U.S. legislation that authorized the construction of numerous dams and modifications to previously existing dams, as well as levees acros ...

, and construction by the

United States Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

began in 1948. The world's first rock tunnel boring machine (TBM) was invented in 1952 by James S. Robbins for the Oahe Dam project, which marked the beginning of machines replacing human tunnelers. The earth main dam reached its full height in October 1959. It was officially dedicated by President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

on August 17, 1962, the year in which it began generating power. The original project cost was $340,000,000.

Statistics

* Dam height: * Dam volume of earth fill: 92,000,000 cubic yards (70,000,000 m³) * Dam volume of concrete: 1,122,000 cubic yards (858,000 m³) * Spillway width: * Spillway crest elevation: * Lake maximum depth: * Plant discharge * Water speed through intake tunnels: 11 mph (5 m/s) * Intake tunnel length: 3,650 feet (average) (1110 m) * Number of

turbines A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful Work (physics), work. The work produced by a turbine can be used ...

: 7, Francis type, 100 RPM * Power generated per turbine: 112.29 MW * reservoir storage capacity: . * States served with electricity:

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

and

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...

* Number of recreation areas around lake: 51 * Shore length: * Counties bordering lake: 14, including 4 in North Dakota (Burleigh, Emmons, Morton, Sioux), and 10 in South Dakota (Campbell, Corson, Dewey, Haakon, Hughes, Potter, Stanley, Sully, Walworth, and Ziebach)

Tours

Tours of the powerplant are given daily, Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Native American displacement

As a result of the dam's construction the

Cheyenne River Indian Reservation The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation was created by the United States in 1889 by breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation, following the attrition of the Lakota in a series of wars in the 1870s. The reservation covers almost all of Dewey ...

lost bringing it down to today.

Standing Rock Reservation The Standing Rock Reservation ( lkt, Íŋyaŋ Woslál Háŋ) lies across the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakota Oyate and the Ihunktuwona and Pabaksa ...

lost leaving it with . Much of the land was taken by eminent domain claims made by the Bureau of Reclamation. Over and above the

land loss Land loss is the term typically used to refer to the conversion of coastal land to open water by natural processes and human activities. The term ''land loss'' includes coastal erosion. It is a much broader term than coastal erosion because land l ...

, most of the reservations' prime agricultural land was included in the loss. The regions where the populations were resettled had soil with a higher clay content, and resources such as medicinal plants were less prevalent.
transcript
The loss of this land had a dramatic effect on the Natives who lived on the reservations. Most of the land was unable to be harvested (to allow the trees to be cut down for wood, etc.) before the land was flooded over with water. One visitor to the reservations later asked why there were so few older Natives on the reservations and was told that "the old people had died of heartache" after the construction of the dam and the loss of the reservations' land. As of 2015, poverty remains a problem for the displaced populations in the Dakotas, who are still seeking compensation for the loss of the towns submerged under Lake Oahe, and the loss of their traditional ways of life. Huff Archeological Site is a fortified

Mandan The Mandan are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still res ...

village site on what is now the bank of Lake Oahe. It is designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

, but is endangered by erosion pressure from the lake.

2011 flooding

Excessive precipitation in the spring, along with melting snow from the Rocky Mountains forced the dam to open the release gates (not the spillway), releasing in June with another through the power plant totaling . The previous release record was in 1997.

Notes

References

* Lawson, Michael L. Dammed Indians: the Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux, 1944–1980. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. * Lazarus, Edward. Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present. New York: Harper Collins, 1991. .
Cornell University site
* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pamphlet "Oahe Power Plant", no date * Summary of Engineering Data – Missouri River Main Stem System http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/projdata/summaryengdat.pdf

External links

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - Oahe Project

Daily Reservoir Water Levels and Water Releases Information (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Hughes County, South Dakota Buildings and structures in Stanley County, South Dakota Dams completed in 1962 Dams in South Dakota Dams on the Missouri River Earth-filled dams Energy infrastructure completed in 1962 Hydroelectric power plants in South Dakota United States Army Corps of Engineers dams de:Lake Oahe