Lake Sakakawea

Lake Sakakawea, located 75 miles up the Missouri River from Bismarck, North Dakota, is the third largest man-made reservoir in the USA. Lake Sakakawea marks the maximum southwest extent of glaciation during the ice age. Of man-made reservoirs in the USA, only Lake Mead and Lake Powell are larger.

Table of contents

1 Garrison Dam
2 Lake Sakakawea State Park
3 Statistics
4 External Links

Garrison Dam

The reservoir was created with the completion of Garrison Dam in 1956, the second (and largest) of six main-stem dams on the Missouri River built and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control, hydroelectric power, navigation and irrigation. (The other five are Fort Peck, Oahe, Big Bend, Fort Randall and Gavins Point.) Hydropower turbines at Garrison Dam generate up to 240 megawatts of electricity. The Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery is the world's largest walleye and northern pike producing facility and also works to restore endangered species, such as the pallid sturgeon.

Lake Sakakawea State Park is the western terminus of the 4,600 mile North Country National Scenic Trail which is a National Millennium Trail that crosses northern rim of the continental United States to Port Henry, New York. The park was originally developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as Garrison Lake State Park. In 1965 the North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department assumed management of the park and renamed it Lake Sakakawea State Park in honor of the Shoshone Indian woman Sacagawea who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition up the Missouri River from Fort Mandan in April 1805.