By Scott Shephard
Fort Peck Lake and Dam - Montana
Many years ago, in my other life as a teacher/debate coach, our competitive season would end with State Student Congress. It was held in Pierre, SD, in the Senate and House chambers of the state capitol building. I didn’t tell many people this but it was my favorite event of the year, mainly because of the setting and also because it was much more relaxed than a regular speech tournament.
I also liked it because it became a tradition that during a break in the action I got to take interested students on what came to be known as “The Dam Tour.” We would pile into one of the school Suburbans and go out to the Lake Oahe dam where I would lecture them about the marvels of this amazing structure and place. One year my students presented me with a hat with “Dam Hat” emblazoned across the front. I wore it with great satisfaction on subsequent Dam Tours.
Fast forward to the present photo and, no, you aren’t looking at Lake Oahe. Instead, I am showing you Lake Fort Peck and the earth structure dam that formed it. You may know this, but there are six dams on the Missouri River and Fort Peck, in Montana, was the first one that was built. Construction started in the 1930s partly for flood control and electrical generation but perhaps mainly to give people struggling with the Great Depression employment. Thank or curse FDR and “The New Deal” for this.
I could bore you with a multitude of details but all I will say now is that prior to last week, I had been to all of the dams along the Missouri except Fort Peck. So I’m crossing this off my bucket list. On our travels to and from the dam, and campground near it, I discovered that eastern Montana, western North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota are my kind of place: wide open prairie and hills, some badlands, few people, good roads and little traffic. You should go. If you do visit Fort Peck, you may be lucky enough to travel on US Highway 2, which, I’m told, is the least traveled US highway in the United States - at least as it goes west across North Dakota towards Spokane, WA.
DJI Mini 3 Pro f1.7 1/5000 sec ISO 100
Here are a few more photos. (The first 4 are mine and the rest are courtesy of the US Army Corps of Engineers.)
