The dammed Missouri Valley

THE

MISSOURI
VALLEY

t»f culture, politics, pro! and plans

In the basin of tl j mudf

$375
net

Richard G. Baumhoff
THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

This rich and living book about the
ways of life, the present condition, and the
huge problems of Missouri, Nebraska, the
Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and parts
of Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, and Minne-
sota was written by a star reporter of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In describing the
course of the "Big Muddy" (our longest
river), Richard G. Baumhoff, long as-
signed to cover life and happenings in the
block of states within the Missouri Val-
ley, deals authoritatively with the natural
forces that have made this area at once a
tourist's paradise and a headache for its
inhabitants.

This book examines the local, state-
wide, and federal efforts — some of them
gigantic in scope — to pin down topsoil,
prevent floods and drought, raise the
standard of living, and allow the Missouri
Valley to fulfill its great potentialities.
Here is a comprehensive and challenging
full-length portrait of a vast and fascinat-
ing sixth of the United States.

with 19 illustrations reproduced in halftone
JACKET DESIGN BY ARTHUR HAWKINS, JR.

rH

THE
DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

THE DAMMED
MISSOURI VALLEY

ONE SIXTH OF OUR NATION

B T

RICHARD G. BAUMHOFF

1951
New Tork ALFRED A. KNOPF

CATALOG CARD NUMBER! 51-11082

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
5K PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Jg

Copyright 1951 by Richard G. Baumhoff. All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages and reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review
to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the
United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada by
McClelland & Stewart Limited.

FIRST EDITION

TO
RUTH, MY WIFE,

WHO, TOO,
LIKES RIVERS

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Foreword

A GREAT LEAVEN is working in a big but relatively unknown
sector of the United States, the extensive valley of the Mis-
souri River. It has been a comparatively backward region,
but much thought and effort and huge sums of money are
going into the task of remaking it and bringing it into its
own. Thus a new interest in the Missouri basin is growing
in the rest of the country. Precedents in regional develop-
ment are being set there. It is the scene of one of the
greatest undertakings the world has ever known, if not in-
deed the greatest: the improvement and development in
entirety of a major watershed. This book is designed to
depict life as it is today in the Missouri basin, and to give
an objective account of the gigantic program of public
works that is under way there, as well as of the inevitable
controversies surrounding it. Sincere effort has been exerted
to make the account factual and accurate. Statistics are used
sparingly, and then generally where they serve to point up
the hugeness of the undertakings. This is essentially a
journalistic report, not the treatise of an economist or an
engineer or a political scientist. A deliberate attempt is
made to interlard the items of deeper significance with hu-
man sidelights. Chiefly the endeavor is to tell about the
people and their problems, their resources, and their aspira-
tions. Since 1945 one of my major assignments, in my ca-
pacity as a news reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
has been to "cover" this Missouri Valley program and re-
lated topics. I have attended and reported most of the meet-

VI FOREWORD

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ings of the Missouri Basin Interagency Committee, which is
handling the current program. I have traveled many thou-
sands of miles back and forth in the basin, by airplane,
train, boat, automobile, and even horseback, and maybe a
mile or two by shanks' mare. This reportorial experience
made the book possible.

R. G. B.

[ vii ]

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Acknowledgments

I WISH to acknowledge with sincere thanks the help of
many persons who, in various ways, have made this book
possible. Present and past members of the Missouri Basin
Interagency Committee, representing both federal agencies
and the states, and many of their assistants, have been of
invaluable aid. Journalistic colleagues have helped. So have
advocates of various points of view in the valley. The pub-
lisher and the various editors of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
have indulged and encouraged me in the assignment of re-
porting news of the Missouri Valley. Names of all those to
whom thanks are due are too numerous to be listed here,
but two persons should be singled out: Sam Shelton, of the
Post-Dispatch, who pioneered in the Missouri basin assign-
ment, and my wife, an informed and kindly critic, who
checked every word of the manuscript and gave wise coun-
sel.

R. G. B.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

i One River and Four Pairs of Men 3

Logic of the river basin as a regional unit

ii Tobacco Root to Missouri Point 16

A description of the winding Missouri River

in High, Lonely, Wind-swept Land 30

A description of the broad Missouri basin

iv TaJce Stanley County: It's No Rhode Island 58
Fundamental problems brought in closer focus

v People: between the ViJcings and the Elizabe-
thans 68

Something about the inhabitants of the region

vi The Towns Get Bigger, the Country Smaller 98

A study of the population and its changes

vii As to "Indians Not Taxed" 113

The story of the earliest known citizens

vm Radio Challenges the Fourth Estate 122

A survey of the press, radio, and TV

X CONTENTS

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CHAPTER PAGE

ix From White-faced Cattle to Uranium 141

Present and potential products and resources

x Suit Pattern for a Giant 168

The big Interagency development plan now afoot

xi Dams and Diversions on the Grand Scale 197
Some of Interagency's big and surprising projects

xii Problems in Profusion 218

Some of the region's chief difficulties compiled

xiii MVA: Hope or Bugaboo of the Basin? 2 59

The Missouri Valley Authority idea; its status

xiv Background for Prediction 274

The shape of things to come in valley manage-
ment

Index follows page 291

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ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

The Source of the Missouri River 14

The Mouth of the Missouri River 1 5

Pathfinder Dam, Wyoming 46

Kortes Dam, Wyoming 47
Hydroelectric Generators at Kortes Dam, Wyoming 47

Medicine Creek Dam, Nebraska 78

How Irrigation Works 79

The Uncontrolled Missouri no

The Missouri under Control in

Fort Peck Dam, Montana 174

Garrison Dam, North Dakota 175

A Modern Conservation Farm 206

A Bridge Washed Out 206

The Capitol at Bismarck, North Dakota 207

The Capitol at Lincoln, Nebraska 238
The Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Bismarck,

North Dakota 238

Petroleum Refinery at Casper, Wyoming 239

A View of Casper, Wyoming 270
A View of Billings, Montana, and the Absaroka

Range 271

MAP following page 7

THE
DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

"FLOOD BULLETIN"

The lower Missouri River basin was scourged by a dis-
astrous flood in July 1951. Crests approached the record
levels of 1844. The twin Kansas Citys of Missouri and Kan-
sas were hardest hit, but many other places, large and
small, suffered. Worst of all was the flooding of the Kan-
sas River and its tributaries in Kansas, but there was flood-
ing also in the Osage River and in the Missouri below
Kansas City. The high water then moved on down the
Mississippi River with severe results at St. Louis and be-
low. Record-breaking deluges of rain in Kansas and adjoin-
ing states were the principal cause. Damages in the Mis-
souri basin were estimated at one billion dollars, and at
least twenty-two lives were lost. More than half a million
inhabitants were displaced, thousands of head of livestock
lost or stranded, seventeen major bridges in Kansas de-
stroyed, all transportation disrupted, two million acres of
fertile bottomland flooded. Immediately the cry went up
for more federal money, quickly and in big sums, to carry
out existing flood-control plans, said to have been blocked
heretofore by strong local opposition. Simultaneously, de-
mands for a Missouri Valley Authority, or something akin
to it, were renewed. This book is designed to give an under-
standing of the great, strange basin that gave birth to this
disaster.

[ 3 ]

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CHAPTER I

One River and Four Pairs of Men

VALLEY of contradictions — that is the far-flung Missouri
River basin. It holds one sixth of the area of the United
States, but only one twentieth of the nation's people. Land
of beef and mutton, of gold and a myriad other buried
treasures, it is still a region of absentee domination. Natural
resources are abundant, but up to now largely neglected.
Minor fortunes accumulate there between seasons, but
sometimes are wiped out overnight, while opportunity no
longer rattles every cabin door.

Water presents the biggest contradiction of all: here too
little, there too much. From early frontier days men have
fought for it with fist and bullet; the scrap goes on today,
but with different weapons — political wiles, interstate di-
plomacy, budgets, bureaucratic scheming, organized move-
ments. Water is the key to the whole future of this amazing
valley. Torrents of water pour from the glacial snowbanks
of the Rocky Mountains, trickle from the coulees of the
Great Plains, gush from the limestone springs of the lower
valley, through brook, creek, and tributary river into the
wildly fluctuating Missouri.

This is a land of contrasts. The lower basin, green and
humid, sometimes is swept by heavy rains from Caribbean
hurricanes. Brown and arid, the upper basin feels the sting

4 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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of the Arctic icebox, watches its snow melt away in the
warm chinooks from the mountains.

A land of extremes — boundless space, tall peaks, spec-
tacularly vast sky, intense heat and cold, dust that can de-
stroy whole counties, occasional snow that buries dwellings,
almost constant wind, big bronzed people, broad human
outlook, measurements on the order of thousands of miles,
millions of acres, billions of dollars — and, quite commonly,
mere dozens of people.

An embattled region of proud, determined, fearless peo-
ple. For a century and a half they have stood up against
Indians, droughts, floods, hail, grasshoppers, all the tricks of
the weather, national neglect, nonresident dominance, and
a lexicon of economic and political isms.

For all too many Americans the Missouri basin is an un-
known land, an inconsequential hinterland. Most of those
who have seen it have no more than the fleeting impressions
to be gained from hasty passage by airliner or streamliner.
They think of it, perhaps, as flat, dull, and dreary. A so-
journer may learn that the plains are not as flat as they
seem; towns, lakes, and woods may be hidden within the
bounding folds. He will have a chance to feel the vibrant
spirit of these people. He may, indeed, come to realize that
this vast region has a certain compelling fascination, a
peculiar lure.

No other major sector of the United States is so obscure
to the rest of the nation as the Missouri Valley. Even the
deserts of the Southwest, the mountain fastnesses of the
West, are better known. In a real sense this basin, at least
its bigger western portion, is our last frontier. It holds rosy
promise for the future. Since World War II big stuff has

I. ONE RIVER AND FOUR PAIRS OF MEN 5

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been going on there in a bold and controversial start at re-
making the valley physically and economically.

The Missouri basin is a continental funnel draining into
the Mississippi River, a terrain that measures 529,350
square miles. It is roughly 1,300 miles long, and has extreme
width of about 700 miles. Its top is a 9,71 5-square-mile slice
of the Canadian Prairie Provinces of Alberta and Saskatche-
wan. The funnel's spout opens into the Mississippi just
above St. Louis, Missouri. The sloping eastern side me-
anders along an almost imperceptible divide in open coun-
try. To the south of this basin lie Pike's Peak, the Sangre de
Cristo range, the Panhandle, steaming plains, oil fields, the
storied Ozarks, and St. Louis, a geographic and historic
crossroads of the nation. Outside the basin, in North Da-
kota, is the geographic center of North America.

Western boundary of the Missouri basin is the Con-
tinental Divide, stretching from the sheep crags of Glacier
Park on the north past wind-swept Mount Evans on the
south. This line crosses Yellowstone Park, where, as in Mon-
tana and Colorado, its location is easily spotted along the
ridges and spires of the lofty Rockies. But in much of Wy-
oming the Divide is far less noticeable, for this is just high
country, not ruggedly mountainous.

In fact, there is a good-sized place in central-southern
Wyoming, not far from the bustling oil town of Rawlins,
where the experts don't even know for sure where the Di-
vide is. This is the Red Desert, an area of perhaps 400
square miles, situated more than a mile above sea level.
Men who know the country well declare they cannot say
with certainty whether the scant moisture of this lonely
spot finds its way into the Missouri or into the Colorado.

6 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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This desert never has been adequately mapped, they say.
Some old maps indicate several creeks running toward the
North Platte, a Missouri tributary; but old-timers maintain
that there are no such creeks. Almost a true desert, this
area has some sparse sagebrush, enough grass for a few
sheep, and an active oil field.

Outward from the perimeter of the Missouri basin,
water flows variously to the Pacific, to subarctic Hudson
Bay, to the tropical Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of California.
The Missouri's chief river neighbors are the Columbia, the
Saskatchewan, the Red River of the North, the Mississippi,
the Arkansas, and the Colorado. Reversals of the plan of
nature are on the federal planning-boards and in one nota-
ble instance already in effect. That instance is the under-
mountain diversion of Colorado River water into the
Missouri Valley; the plans contemplate a similar shifting
elsewhere from the Colorado and the Arkansas and, con-
versely, from the Missouri to the northern Red.

An hour's travel by air northwest from the Missouri
basin leads to the Columbia ice fields, whose outer melt
follows, in order, the Athabaska, the Slave, and the Mac-
kenzie to the sea beyond the Arctic Circle. Flight for an
hour southeast from the Missouri basin reaches the Ten-
nessee Valley, which impinges on the land of peach and
magnolia blossoms. Pivot the Missouri basin on its nozzle
near St. Louis: shifted at various angles, the basin would
reach to Hudson Bay, the Gaspe Peninsula, beyond Havana,
Cuba, below Merida, Yucatan, out to Boulder Dam, or well
into the Mexico of Pancho Villa. Such geographical day-
dreaming helps to fix the size and importance of the Mis-
souri Valley.

I. ONE RIVER AND FOUR PAIRS OF MEN 7

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Ten states share this basin, yet only one of them, Ne-
braska, is wholly within it. Half of Missouri is in the basin,
forming the triangular spout of the funnel. With Missouri
in the eastern tier are the whole western edge of Iowa and
a little southwestern corner of Minnesota. Next, with Ne-
braska, are roughly the northern half of Kansas, virtually
all of South Dakota, and the southwestern two thirds of
North Dakota. The western tier consists of the northeastern
quarter of Colorado, most of Wyoming (omitting a large
southwestern triangle), the greater part of Montana, and
the little bite into Canada.

In such a valley you might expect the principal river to
be the central feature, flowing down the middle. Not so
with the paradoxical Missouri. It hugs rather closely the
northwestern, northern, and eastern fringes of its basin un-
til finally it is centralized in its swirling, mud-laden run as
it cuts across the state that is its namesake. As the stream
flows, the Missouri is almost twice as long as its basin. The
nation's longest river, it twists and bends for 2,465 miles
from its source at Three Forks, Montana, to its mouth
above St. Louis.

Three Forks, a pleasant spot in a big cup or mountain
park, is named for the trio of streams that join there to
form the Missouri. These are the Jefferson, the Madison,
and the Gallatin. Actually, the Jefferson is a catch-all drain-
ing a long, curving, mountainous rim through a series of
subsidiaries. Its main course, nearly 400 miles long, takes in
also the Beaverhead River and Red Rock Creek, which
starts where Idaho is at the southern border of the Mis-
souri basin.

Both the Madison and the Gallatin rise in Yellowstone

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Park, in Wyoming. Oddly enough, not far away from their
sources the Missouri's main tributary, the Yellowstone, cuts
spectacularly across the park.

Tributaries of the Missouri, as a whole, are like a trans-
continental ladder, for most of them flow from west to
east across the basin. There are not very many of them, for
so vast a terrain — an indication of its aridity. In Montana
there are only three branches of importance other than the
Yellowstone; their names will be foreign to many readers:
the Marias, the Milk, and the Musselshell. The Yellow-
stone, which actually enters the Missouri just inside North
Dakota, picks up the Big Horn, the Tongue, and the Pow-
der. Below it in both of the broad Dakotas the list consists
only of the Little Missouri, Knife, Heart, Cannonball,
Grand, Moreau, Cheyenne, Bad, White, Big Sioux, and
James. The James is the only tributary of importance on
the eastern side of the Missouri in the upper basin.

Nebraska puts in just two important streams, the Nio-
brara and the Platte, whose upper branches come, respec-
tively, out of Colorado and Wyoming. Iowa gives the
Little Sioux and the Nishnabotna. From Kansas comes the
river named after it, familiarly called the Kaw, which is an
aggregation of the Smoky Hill, Saline, Solomon, Republi-
can, and Blue. Missouri adds to the main stem chiefly the
Grand and the Chariton from the north, and the Osage
and the Gasconade from the south and west; but these
often carry far more water than many of the western tribu-
taries.

Most of the water that nourishes, plagues, or tantalizes
the basin comes from the melting snows of the mountains.
Some comes from the snowfall on the plains, usually not

I. ONE RIVER AND FOUR PAIRS OF MEN 9

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very heavy. The terrific blizzards that buried a vast chunk
of the plains country early in 1949 were one of those rule-
proving exceptions. Much of the rather sparse rainfall fre-
quently occurs in concentrated doses. The fact remains
that the mountains produce most of the water that even-
tually works its way across the valley and into the Missis-
sippi.

From the last snow of spring until the first of fall, the
deep piles of snow high on the mountain ranges slowly
trickle away. The drops plunge down the mountainsides,
often in miniature falls, charge over the rocks of the high,
steep brooks and creeks, and gather in the rivers. Under the
blazing sun it would seem as if the winter's snowpiles must
disappear in a hurry. But up there above timberline, often
between 11,000 and 14,000 feet above sea level, there are
cold winds and short days, and the snowbanks are many
feet thick. So the melting goes slowly on. Hundreds of
miles to the east the gathered waters may make or break
man's puny efforts.

Properly controlled, that water can irrigate more farms
to grow more food for the increasing population of the
country and to meet the rising demand on Uncle Sam to
help feed the world. It can generate electricity in huge
blocks to light the farms and towns and to power the new
industries that might transform the economy of the basin.
It can fill the water-consumption demands of the cities and
the factories; it can serve the needs of downstream towns
now faced with sanitary problems. It may aid navigation in
the Missouri and even in the lower Mississippi. In short,
this water can help make the valley of contradictions into a
rich and useful land.

1O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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Along with the water, the soil and the forests must be
preserved. Too much of the fruitful topsoil has vanished
under the onslaught of wind and uncontrolled water and
has been jeopardized by unwise grazing of cattle and sheep.
Too much forest has been ruined by wanton cutting. Be-
low the thin life-giving surface of topsoil lies a rich and
varied storehouse of base and fine minerals which, surpris-
ingly, man has exploited so far only in rather limited
fashion.

Outside the few cities and the relatively few larger
towns the population of the Missouri basin averages only
about nine persons per square mile. Indeed, over the greater
part of the lonely state of Wyoming there is less than one
person per square mile. By way of contrast, the most
crowded neighborhoods of New York City probably have
more than 30,000 persons per square mile.

Another idea of the vastness and the loneliness of the
Missouri basin may be conveyed by a check of the bridges
crossing the big river itself. From the mouth back to the
precipitous falls in the Missouri near Great Falls, Montana,
there are just 66 bridges over a distance of almost 1,900
miles. Two thirds of these are in the first 760 miles, be-
tween the mouth and the present head of navigation, Sioux
City, Iowa. There are only 16 in the Dakotas, and 5 in
Montana. Of all these crossings, 37 are for highways, 24 for
railroads, 2 for pipe lines. That leaves 3 others. One is the
contractors' work bridge at Garrison Dam, North Dakota.
Another is Fort Peck Dam, Montana — but when you cross
it from the north you come to a dead end at the south,
with nothing but many miles of wheat fields and dirt trails
ahead. The third belongs to the Department of Justice,

I. ONE RIVER AND FOUR PAIRS OF MEN 11

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connecting Leavenworth Prison, in Kansas, with a prison
farm in Missouri.

In the Dakotas and Montana the bridges lie, on an aver-
age, more than 50 miles apart, in contrast with the numer-
ous crossings of rivers like the Connecticut, Hudson, Dela-
ware, upper Mississippi, or Sacramento.

Discovery of the Missouri River is among the earliest
records of the white man in the vast intermountain country
between the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. It occurred in
1673, or 181 years after Columbus came to America. Yet
another i3i-year period was to elapse before there was any
real effort to explore or develop the Missouri basin. Thus
the real history of the valley has been less than a century
and a half in the making.

Four pairs of men have figured prominently in the his-
tory of the Missouri basin: Marquette and Joliet, Jefferson
and Napoleon, Lewis and Clark, Pick and Sloan. In the
summer of 1673 two Canadian explorers came down the
Mississippi from the north. They were Father Jacques Mar-
quette, Jesuit missionary, and Louis Joliet, trader. Suddenly,
round a bend, they came upon a roaring torrent joining the
Father of Waters. It was the Missouri, muddy and evi-
dently in flood.

Marquette set down in his journal: "I have seen noth-
ing more frightful. A mass of large trees — real floating is-
lands. They came rushing so impetuously that we could
not, without great danger, expose ourselves to pass across/'

St. Louis, first outpost of the West, was founded in
1764 by a French merchant who came up the Mississippi
from New Orleans. In the years since Marquette and Joliet,
adventurous French fur traders had worked their way up

12 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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the Missouri by boat, but their exploration had been lim-
ited and they made no real impact on the development of
the beautiful and terrifying wilderness that engulfed them,
or on the roving Indian tribes scattered over it. They were
significant as forerunners of the great fur trade on the Mis-
souri which lured the Chouteaus, the Sublettes, and others
from St. Louis, the Astors from the East.

It was Thomas Jefferson, third President and far-sighted
statesman, who acquired the Missouri Valley for the na-
tion. He sent his representatives to the ministers of Na-
poleon, thinking only to buy the lower Mississippi region
to assure a Gulf coast outlet. Napoleon, ever in need of
funds, made a deal instead to sell the whole Louisiana Ter-
ritory to the United States for about two cents an acre.
This was in 1803, the first territorial accession to the origi-
nal thirteen colonies, and the biggest addition ever made
to the country. The Missouri basin constituted not quite
two thirds of the entire Louisiana Purchase. The other
third consisted of the land to the south, bordering the
Mississippi, the rest of Iowa, and a considerable part of
Minnesota.

Now was the time for exploration of the new land, a
challenge to the adventurer, the entrepreneur, the patriot,
and him who was merely restless, a lover of the wide-open
spaces. Jefferson obtained from Congress an appropriation
of $2,500 for an expedition to the Northwest. Two early
captains in the Army Corps of Engineers were assigned to
the task: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. They or-
ganized a force and set out in May 1804 from a point near
the Missouri's mouth. Their journey led to the upper Mis-
souri, across other parts of the basin, and on out to the

I. ONE RIVER AND FOUR PAIRS OF MEN 13

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Pacific coast. They returned to St. Louis in September
1806 laden with facts and stories about this newest outpost
of civilization, which they reported in writing in great de-
tail.

By 1821 Missouri had been admitted to the Union.
Next came Iowa in 1846, Minnesota in 1858, and Kansas,
on the hot breath of civil war, in 1861. Nebraska was es-
tablished after the war, in 1867; Colorado, the "centennial
state," in 1876. Both Dakotas became states on the same
day in 1889, Montana six days later. The last of the basin
states, Wyoming, was created in 1890.

Three quarters of the nineteenth century was spent in
wresting much of the Missouri basin from the Indians,
who, oddly, clung to the old-fashioned notion that the land
was theirs and the white man an invader. Alexander Gra-
ham Bell had already patented the telephone and Captain
James B. Eads had opened his famous bridge across the
Mississippi at St. Louis when Custer's Last Stand occurred.
This was the Battle of the Little Big Horn in southern
Montana between the Big Horn and the Tongue rivers.

Slowly over the years progress has been achieved, but
in many ways it has advanced less far in the valley of con-
tradictions than elsewhere. True, the airplane, the electric
eye, the slot machine, and the unicameral legislature all
have moved into the basin, along with a lot of other things
good, bad, and indifferent. As World War II was brewing,
people of the basin realized the necessity of composing his-
toric differences over the treatment and use of their funda-
mental resource, water. It was then that the fourth pair of
men came onto the scene.

Lewis A. Pick, then a colonel heading a division office of

14 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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the Corps of Engineers at Omaha, Nebraska, drew up a
relatively short study and report for the basin, dealing par-
ticularly with navigation and flood control, of interest espe-
cially in the lower part of the valley. Meanwhile, William
Glenn Sloan, at that time an assistant regional director of
the Federal Bureau of Reclamation at Billings, Montana,
had been working on a long, elaborate study, dealing essen-
tially with irrigation and kindred matters in the upper valley.
Mr. Sloan hastened to issue his report after the Pick report
was filed. The result, frequently called a "shotgun wedding,"
was the Pick-Sloan plan, signed into law by President Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt late in 1944. This has grown into the even
larger and more ambitious so-called Interagency plan, a
multi-billion-dollar undertaking to conserve the water and
the soil and make the basin over. Among other things, the
plan calls for more than a hundred dams of varied purpose
on the Missouri proper and its many tributaries, from one
end of the valley to the other. Inevitably, it is a controversial
enterprise, for in one way or another it touches on most of
the major facets of life and many of the minor ones through-
out the basin.

This is the second big development in the nation to be
initiated with a major river basin as the unit. The first, of
course, is the successful Tennessee Valley Authority, which
has transformed its relatively small region. TVA was the
outgrowth of years of urging by the late Senator George W.
Norris of Nebraska. It was created in 1933 as one of the
early steps in President Roosevelt's New Deal.

An interagency setup similar to the one in the Missouri
basin has been in existence for several years in the Columbia
valley. In opposition to this plan, there has been an abor-

i. Three Forks, Montana, source of the Missouri River. Jeffer-
son River (foreground) here joins the Madison and the Gallatin,
which come from the Yellowstone peaks of Wyoming. The
Missouri begins its Jong career in the upper left hand corner of
this picture. Paul Berg, St. Louis Post-Dispatch PICTURES.

2. Missouri Point. Here the Missouri (lower righthand corner)
flows into the Mississippi. Beyond the Mississippi lies Illinois.
Lloyd Spainhower, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

I. ONE RIVER AND FOUR PAIRS OF MEN 15

<>0<»<><><><x><><>^^

tive push, with strong backing in Washington, to establish
a Columbia Valley Authority. Meanwhile the movement
for a Missouri Valley Authority, which was lively in the
1940*5, has simmered down. Recently a third federal inter-
agency scheme has been started in the Arkansas River basin,
and a fourth in New England. An interstate compact is
dealing with the knotty problems of the Colorado River.
Incodel, a co-operative interstate movement, is working on
the Delaware River. There have been perennial tentative
moves in Congress to divide the nation into nine major
valleys for purposes of resource management.

While there are those who fear that any type of federal
agency dealing with a valley region is a serious threat to
states' rights, it seems clear that the watershed of a great
river is a logical basis for dealing with the fundamental
resource of water and with related resources. This point of
view was backed by many of the findings of the Hoover
Commission on Governmental Reorganization and by
President Truman's Water Resources Policy Commission.
It has been espoused repeatedly by President Truman in
his speeches. Now war and the threat of war have lent
urgency to the demand for continued development of the
Missouri Valley.

It is a striking thought that the river, which, next to
fire, made probably the greatest imprint on the rise of cul-
ture from prehistoric times, persists today, in the age of the
atomic bomb and the jet plane, as a leading factor in man's
destiny.

[ 16 ]

<*c><X><><><£><£>0<><>0<^^

CHAPTER II

Tobacco Boot to Missouri Point

ALTHOUGH it springs from the nation's rugged mountain
backbone and drops to the Midwestern trough of the conti-
nent, the Missouri River itself is not precipitous. At Three
Forks, its source, the Missouri is at an altitude of just over
4,000 feet above sea level; at its mouth, near St. Louis, it is
just under 400 feet. Thus the average drop is not quite one
foot and one half per mile for the entire distance; it is less
than one foot for the lower end. There is a series of low,
rocky falls in the stream near Great Falls, Montana, which
marked the upper end of early-day navigation.

The Bay of Fundy, in Canada just beyond Maine, is
noted for its remarkable tide, which has been reported to
fluctuate as much as 62 feet. But the Missouri River has a
record range in level of 39 feet at Kansas City, without tide
— just the difference between a superabundance of water in
flood time and a dearth in dry season. Offhand, a vertical
distance of 39 feet does not seem to be an impressive sta-
tistic. Yet translated to horizontal and volumetric terms, it
represents the difference between an almost insignificant
trickle of water in a muddy stream bed and a vast, destruc-
tive flood spread across miles of bottomland and swirling
through the buildings of city and town.

The trickle at low stage may be only a few feet wide. In
contrast, General Pick has told of standing on the bluff at

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 1J

<><><><><c><c><>C><^

Arrow Rock, Missouri, in one of the big floods of the mid-
dle 1940*8, when the river seemed to him to extend for ten
miles across the fertile bottoms. At Bismarck, North Da-
kota, in the drought times of the 1930*8, residents told of
riding bicycles across the dry river bottom. When an ice
jam broke at a later date, the Missouri burst out of its
earthen gorge at Bismarck with a rush of water.

Army engineers have estimated that the greatest flow of
water in the Missouri River was at the rate of 892,000
cubic feet per second, at Hermann, in eastern Missouri, in
the great flood of June 1844. This form of measurement
means that water flowed past a given point in the volume
stated within the tick of a second. Put another way, it
means that water passed Hermann at the height of this
inundation at the rate of 34% trillion gallons daily. Cut
the estimate in half and it is still a fearful lot of water —
New York City was consuming only 1% billion gallons
daily at the time of its recent shortage scare.

The lowest flow of record at Hermann was 4,200 cubic
feet per second in January 1940. This was less than one half
of one per cent of the estimated maximum, yet it was at
the rate of almost 163 billion gallons per day, enough for
135 New York Cities. The contrast in flow is relatively just
as great on the Missouri's tributaries. An Army Engineers
tabulation shows a string of zeros for the minimum flow
recorded on some of these. A notable contrast can be found
for one tributary, the Republican River, at Bloomington,
on the southern Nebraska border. Maximum flow of record
there was 260,000 cubic feet per second in June 1935; mini-
mum was seven cubic feet per second in October 1937.
Naturally, volume affects speed. In the presently navi-

l8 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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gable lower Missouri the current ranges from two miles per
hour at time of low water to seven miles in flood time. In
this automotive era a seven-mile speed sounds like some-
thing from horse-and-buggy days. Just try breasting that
current, however, with oar, outboard motor, or even the
Diesel-powered screw propeller of a modern towboat. Or
ride it downstream in a launch for exhilaration.

The normal volume of the Missouri builds up bit by
bit as branch after branch joins the parent stream. River
by river, all the way down the basin, the Missouri collects
its torrent. Flood volume may show up at any section along
the whole course. Floods may be highly localized or they
may extend for hundreds of miles, rolling inexorably down
the valley. They may be caused by chinooks or other sud-
den thaws or by heavy rains, unusual snows, or the breakup
of ice jams. One of the curses of this valley of contradic-
tions is that in the areas of limited precipitation much of
the rain that does come often descends in concentrated
deluges, rather than in nicely timed showers — none of that
gentle and timely rain from heaven; too often heaven sends
gully-washers when what this country needs is sod-soakers.

The finest way to see the Missouri River is to fly its
tortuous route. The aerial view gives an excellent picture,
helping the onlooker to grasp the significance and problems
of the stream and its basin. Few persons, of course, have
had the opportunity to fly this roundabout course. Even
many of the federal engineers assigned to deal with the
river have seen it from the air only in piecemeal fashion.

Three Forks, where the Jefferson, the Madison, and the
Gallatin come close to having a common confluence to
form the Missouri, is a pleasant, broad, sheltered cup in the

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 19

<x><><><><^e«>o<><><^^

Rocky Mountains. The irregular lowlands bordering the
streams are verdant. Around them the higher ground may
be patched alternately with the pale gold of wheat and the
brown of grassland. Some of the surrounding mountains
are barren, but the slopes of the Continental Divide to the
west and south are forested thickly with lodgepole pine and
other growth. Circling this cup, the summertime aerial
visitor is likely to pass close to snow-topped peaks of the
Tobacco Root range in a temperature that may be below
freezing at that altitude in spite of brilliant sunshine. These
Tobacco Root Mountains, northwest of Yellowstone Park,
rise prominently to the south of Three Forks. Dotted
among them and the adjacent ranges are numerous pretty
lakes in rocky holes and typical mountain "parks/' pleasant
clearings among the crags.

At its outset the Missouri flows north, leaving the valley
of its source through a defile. For a hundred miles or so it
cuts through mountain country; to its west the Divide
curves between Helena, which is in the Missouri basin, and
Butte, the copper city, outside it on the western slope; to
its east lie the Big Belt Mountains, a wild, rough, rather low
range. Here the Missouri is a clear, clean river winding
through lightly wooded hills that run to 7,000 or 8,000 feet.
In this stretch are to be found one local irrigation dam that
is hardly more than a weir, three old private power dams,
and, rising in a gorge, the construction work of Canyon
Ferry Dam, one of the new federal projects.

At the Gates of the Mountains the river slips out of the
rocky land whence it sprang, zigzagging, between high,
rocky cliffs, marked here and there with imprints of an
earlier race of man. As you look back upstream, you can

2O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

•0<>«><><><x^0<X><>^^

see why the first explorers called this place the Gates of the
Mountains, for suddenly there is an illusion that the rock
does unhinge to let the river through.

Then there is a startling change. The river emerges onto
a plateau, where it follows an exaggerated serpentine pat-
tern for miles between gentle, low banks whose immediate
vicinity is green and pleasant. From the air you are re-
minded of pictured scenes along quiet English brooks, un-
til the eye grasps the hundreds of thousands of acres of the
plateau, used to a great extent for raising wheat.

The wheat fields form a geometric pattern of huge
stripes. This reflects a practice widespread in Montana, fol-
lowed to some extent in the Dakotas and Wyoming, but
not extensively used elsewhere in this country, which is
said to have originated in Canada more than thirty years
ago. The practice is wind-stripping, whereby alternate strips
of equal width are laid out to defeat the erosive effect of
wind. One strip lies fallow for a year, while the next one is
planted to wheat, and so on; the next year this usage is
reversed. The effect tends to hold the thin, vital layer of
topsoil in place and, agricultural specialists contend, to
yield more grain in the long run than if the entire area
were planted simultaneously. On this plateau the strips are
20 rods (330 feet) wide, and their length, which may be
well in excess of a mile, is limited only by ownership or
topography. A single wheatgrower may own thousands of
acres.

The red brick smokestack of a metal mill at Great Falls
looms big in spite of the Gargantuan landscape. It is almost
big enough to slip like a mailing tube over the Washington
Monument. Next you see, in succession, Black Eagle Falls,

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 21

<><><><><xx><><><^>^^

Crooked Falls, Rainbow Falls, and the 96-foot Great Falls,
for which the city is named. Here, some hydroelectric power
is generated. The falls are gradual rocky drops rather than
spectacular plunges of water, and they are in a gorge whose
coarse, gravelly soil has eroded in great fissures back into
the plains. Soon, in the flight downstream, you see how silt
is beginning to discolor the river: the start of the Big
Muddy. In the dry season, when the power dams are stor-
ing much of the river's flow, the stream may degenerate
into slimy green stretches of shallow, stagnant water
streaked with sandbars.

Across north-central Montana the path of the Missouri
is a big gully in the badly eroded plains, which seem from
aloft to be vast, lonely, and forbidding. The reservoir of
Fort Peck Dam, an Army project dating from the public
works program sired by the depression of the thirties, is
another of the basin's sharp contrasts. It is a deep man-
made lake over one hundred miles long which can be in
turn shimmering and blue or green, white-capped from the
wind, or frozen in thick, rough ice. The dam is a four-mile-
long pile of earth flung up by dredges. Its rock-faced up-
stream side has been known to teem with rattlesnakes.
Excess water released from the reservoir runs through a
mile-long concrete spillway.

Beyond the dam the river twists through a more in-
viting and agricultural terrain. The lowland appears gentle
and green in summer. The billowing plains all around are
in green, gray, tan, and gold. In this sector can be seen a
fine example of a special twist in soil conservation: contour
wind-stripping, in which the alternating stripes of the wheat
fields make a crazy-quilt design because they bend to fol-

22 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><^£<><>«><>0<£><^e^

low the varying levels of the land. Sometimes the river here
may look like coffee-and-milk; at other times it may assume
a blackish cast.

Just after the Missouri crosses into North Dakota, it is
joined by the Yellowstone, which at this point normally
carries a greater volume of water than the Missouri itself.
Nature has given the Yellowstone's mouth an unusual
form: it points back upstream against the Missouri. Nature
also has played the Yellowstone a dirty trick by filling it
with silt. In its upper reaches the Yellowstone is a spar-
kling, tumbling, crystal-clear mountain stream, but its lower
end carries churned-up soil of Wyoming and Montana in
great volume. In fact, at the juncture of the Yellowstone
and the Missouri the Yellowstone's silt load appears heavier
than the Missouri's. From the air the two muddy streaks
are seen to mix slowly together; for a little way they look
almost like two separate flows within a single channel. This
phenomenon is not unique, being duplicated where the Big
Horn enters the Yellowstone and where the Missouri joins
the Mississippi.

In both northeastern Montana and northwestern North
Dakota the Missouri crosses long stretches of rather flat
land, where it can spread out placidly in broad reaches and
lazy bends. Come high water, the banks may cave in, pro-
ducing new silt. The river may even change its course
markedly in terrain like this. Indeed, it is a surprise to see
from your plane the vestiges of old oxbow loops in these
corners of Western states. You may have thought that such
loops occurred only in the alluvial bottoms of the lower
Missouri and the lower Mississippi. Yet the pattern here is
the same as you are to see later in profusion as you fly along

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 23

<><><><><£><><><X*><^^

the Missouri River in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Mis-
souri: an elliptical lake or swamp, or maybe just a tracing
on the ground. Viewed from above, these places stand out
like the proverbial sore thumb as former courses of the
river. The shifted and usually shortened and straightened
stream has left them stranded anywhere from a few yards to
a mile or more from the present bank.

The oxbows occur mainly between the "gorge country"
and the "bluff country"; that is, between the mouth of the
Niobrara in northeastern Nebraska and the mouth of the
Grand in western Missouri. They are to be found, however,
a few miles northwest of St. "Louis, where they form a once
popular suburban lake and two duck-hunting marshes.
Some of the notable oxbows below Sioux City, Iowa, were
formed before Army Engineer records were started about
1880.

The Missouri and its surroundings are relatively devoid
of colorful detail across North Dakota. The countryside is
a mixture of grain fields and rough grazing land. The river's
banks are rather low, but the stream pursues a definite
declivity in the rolling plains. The river bottoms in general
are heavily wooded, running strongly to the familiar cotton-
wood tree. Near the center of North Dakota a huge opera-
tion has passed the halfway mark: the ten-year job of build-
ing Garrison Dam, at a cost already estimated as likely to
be at least $268,000,000.

In South Dakota the surroundings of the river are
rougher and wilder. Along the northwestern quadrant the
country is barren. At low stage many sandbars show up in
the river. Here, and in fact all the way from the mountains
to western Missouri, the tributary streams, almost without

24 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

4>&X><><&$*>4>&Z^^

exception, have cut sinuous courses, as in geologic time they
have sought out the softest and easiest way in their blind
groping for the distant sea. The Missouri itself has carved
a deep gorge through shale and other materials in much of
southern South Dakota.

Now in flat and semi-humid country, the Missouri for a
hundred miles or so constitutes the eastern border of South
Dakota and Nebraska. Here the stream is uncontrolled and
shifts at will. You can see where the channel has bitten off
a chunk of good farmland from one bank, while on the
other side a sandbar starts in the erstwhile path of the chan-
nel. Soon it will be an island and some day it will join the
mainland. Such shifting can be stopped by man, but not
through puny measures or local action. It calls for federal
work costing many millions of dollars, plus constant main-
tenance, for the Missouri, like the jungle, can revert to
natural state in a hurry.

The Missouri has been pretty well stabilized from Sioux
City, Iowa, at the bottom corner of South Dakota, to the
mouth. This stabilization is a notable by-product of the
Army's long efforts to establish a navigation channel in this
stretch. But during World War II both initial improve-
ments and annual maintenance were thrust aside. One day
after the war an Army engineer was flying over the mouth
of the Little Sioux River, where the banks were caving and
both streams were running wild. "Isn't that a hell of a
sight!" he exclaimed in the tones of a man who likes his
rivers neat and tidy.

All the way from Sioux City to Kansas City the Mis-
souri is a boundary between states, Nebraska and Kansas on
the west, Iowa and Missouri on the east. It wanders over a

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 2$

^XCXXXXH^^^X^^^

flood plain between low, wooded bluffs that sometimes are
several miles apart. In northern Iowa these hills have odd
conical shapes, as they are of loess, "an seolian deposit" —
that is, fine wind-borne earth. These bluffs of Iowa may
once have been the topsoil of the Great Plains. Between
the highlands, as the oxbows testify, the river often has
changed its route.

Sometimes when that has happened the Missouri has
assailed state sovereignty and cut off normal access to land,
to say nothing of playing hob with county taxable values.
For the great river cares naught for political boundaries. As
recently as August 4, 1950, President Truman signed a bill
giving the consent of Congress to the rectification of an
ancient boundary dispute between Kansas and Missouri.
The St. Joseph Gazette reported that Missouri got the big
end of the bargain, by which 10,000 acres changed states.
Kansas relinquished 5,000 acres of land on the east side of
the river in one spot and 1,800 acres in each of two other
spots; it gained in return only 1,400 acres on the west side.
The compact fixed the interstate boundary as the center of
the river from the Nebraska-Kansas line at the fortieth par-
allel to the mouth of the Kaw at Kansas City. Barring an
act of God and allowing for regular appropriating acts of
Congress to keep the stream of maintenance funds flowing,
the solemnly arrived-at boundary should remain fixed for a
while.

Pigeon Creek Bend is a broad curve in the Missouri
above Omaha, Nebraska. There you can see from aloft that
the river has had five distinct channels within fairly recent
times. Three of the old chutes, now tree-covered sloughs,
are on the Iowa side. The 1947 flood poured over a dike

26 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<&<><$><Z><M><$><&<><><^

at the head of a chute on the Nebraska side and reopened
that course. The main channel, for a wonder, stayed put
that time. As a result of this wandering, a sizable chunk of
river bottom belongs to the willows and the marshes and
their wild denizens.

The only large cities of the whole Missouri basin which
are on the Missouri River are Omaha, the twin Kansas
Citys, Sioux City, and St. Joseph. They are among the eight
largest cities of the valley. Army flood walls and levees at
Omaha and the Kansas Citys clearly delineate the means of
confining the river in populous centers. The most striking
showing of the Missouri's straitjacket, however, is to be
seen looking down on open country along the lower river.
There you can observe how the system of pile dikes —
curving fences of stout timber pilings — stone revetments,
willow mattresses, and short "wing" dikes succeeds in pin-
ning down the channel and giving permanence to the
banks. This is a fascinating sight, for it discloses uncanny
precision in converting blueprints into reality with simple
weapons and the power of a little floating machinery against
the relentless river.

Even so, nature is still boss. You can spot heavy piles
that have been sheared off, as by a giant knife, where an ice
gorge broke loose and shot downstream. That happened,
for instance, at latan Bend, Kansas, in 1949, when the ice
swept like a glacier for a distance of more than five miles
along a path half a mile to one mile wide in the rich bot-
tomland of two counties. Several thousand acres of wheat
were laid waste.

With their channel work, the Army Engineers can put
the stream where they want it. Not many years ago a mod-

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 2J

&X>&>&&&Z*>^^

ern highway bridge was erected at South Omaha largely on
dry land. Then the engineers diverted the river to run under
it. They decided to eliminate Liberty Bend, a long loop be-
low Kansas City, so that flood waters could move out faster
and they could therefore reduce the height of the protec-
tive works needed in the city. There again a new bridge was
constructed on dry land. If you could have been in one of
the circling airplanes the spring day when a levee plug was
blown up, you would have seen the brown water trickle,
then spurt, then race greedily through the straight new
channel. Every time you flew past -in the next few months
you would have seen the new route widened still more, the
old one gradually disappearing. Now you cannot be too
sure at first glance that the river ever did move through the
old channel. Silt has filtered through the constricting works
and created fresh land along the loop.

There is a long series of S-shaped bends in the river at
St. Joseph. Some of the Army Engineers would like to
knock out one of the loops at the northern edge of the city.
This would shorten that stretch from nine miles to two and
one half miles. It also would be equivalent to tossing the
St. Joseph airport and surrounding farmland into Kansas.
St. Joseph is not likely to stand for this without a loud,
anguished howl that would be heard as far away as Wash-
ington. The school favoring the change suggests that re-
duced maintenance costs would pay for the work in thirty
or forty years. On the other hand, one Army man looked
lovingly at the meandering river as he flew across the bends,
and growled: "We spent fifty years putting in the revet-
ments to hold those curves. Wouldn't it be kind of foolish
to knock them out now?"

28 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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At Kansas City the Missouri turns east again and bisects
its namesake state. The normal channel widens to a quar-
ter of a mile or more as additional tributaries pour in. Now
the river is in the middle of its broad flood plain, now at
the northern bluff, now at the southern bulwark. In the
western part of the state Sunshine Lake stands out as a re-
minder of the biggest shift of the river within the memory
of man. Many years ago the river hugged the little town of
Camden, on the north side. It got into one of its wild,
wandering moods and wound up five miles south, along-
side the village of Napoleon.

You look for the mouth of the Chariton River, coming
down from Iowa across north-central Missouri. It is hard to
find. An Army man explains: "That mouth wanders all
over." For years now the Army has been seeking to control
the Chariton, but Congress has concluded repeatedly that
this was one little job that could be put off. You see the
mouth of the Osage, which flows parallel to the Missouri
for many yards, separated only by a narrow strip of low land
from the main stem, before they actually converge. The
Osage — which starts in Kansas as the Marais des Cygnes,
or Swan Marsh, River and gathers much water in the
Ozarks — used to enter the Missouri at a right angle. About
1933 it changed this contact by some riparian quirk.

Through central and eastern Missouri the bluffs rise
taller and the scenic grandeur increases. This stretch rivals
the palisades of the Hudson or the upper Mississippi. The
vegetation changes, too: now the cedar, the hawthorn, the
oak, the dogwood, and the redbud, the hickory and the
walnut, the elm, and other trees clothe the hillsides in sea-
sonal splendor.

II. TOBACCO ROOT TO MISSOURI POINT 2Q

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As the suburbs of St. Louis come into view, you see
modern houses, even mansions, on the hilltops. In western
St. Louis County only an eight-mile neck of high ground
separates the Missouri from the Meramec River, which
flows into the Mississippi. The continental funnel is taper-
ing into its spout. Only a fringe of this county is in the
Missouri basin. The city of St. Louis, which is at least the
historic capital of the basin, actually is outside it, though it
reaches within three miles of the basin's edge.

Now, at last, you see Missouri Point, a long, narrow tip
of St. Charles County, Missouri, between the Mississippi
and the Missouri. In Indian days this was the Portage des
Sioux, where nomad bands carried their canoes overland
about two miles to save paddling perhaps thirty-five miles.
Repeatedly in modern times Missouri Point has been inun-
dated when the two rivers joined in flood across it. You
might expect to find something especially spectacular at
the normal confluence of the country's two greatest rivers.
If so, you will be disappointed. It is entirely within an area
of flat, low land, partly wooded, but also dotted with farm
fields. Only as seen from the air does it approach the char-
acter of a notable scene. Although it is well within a great
metropolitan district, with big power plants and factories
not far away, the confluence is virtually inaccessible by land.
No decent road goes near it. The very tip of Missouri Point
is a tiny, squat island — a far cry from the majesty of the
Tobacco Root range.

I 30 J

<^<i><^><^^>^^^

CHAPTER III

High, Lonely, Wind-swept Land

As YOU travel west from Kansas City or Omaha or Sioux
Falls or Fargo, whether you go by automobile or train or
plane, but especially if you are motoring, you sense gradual,
subtle changes. The great bowl of the sky becomes bigger,
more real. The sun, the moon, the stars all shine brighter.
Storms are more intense and awe-inspiring, sunsets more
brilliant. The earth spreads out in ever increasing pano-
ramas. Cities and towns are fewer and smaller, but they
have in common the advantage of wide streets and a sort of
self-sufficient air. The grain elevator and the water tank on
a tower are the skyline landmarks of most towns. Step by
step the vegetation changes, grows more sparse. An all-
pervading sense of loneliness, of the smallness of man, may
fill your soul. The whistling wind, a vast black cloud, or a
sudden chilliness may induce a foreboding of unknown dan-
gers. Soon, however, you learn to glorify the solitude and to
find a strange grandeur in the wide-open spaces.

One subtle change that may take you by surprise is the
steady rise in altitude. The prairies and plains are seldom
truly flat. They undulate. Your westbound car or train goes
downhill frequently, but the chances are the next upgrade
will be twice as long. Every hour's travel takes you to a
little higher level. The earth has another trick in its reper-
tory in large western and northern portions of the Missouri

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 31

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basin. There it often is piled in a series of two or three or
more levels — a sort of stack of plateaus. Each level is called
a bench. From some vantage point you may survey a chunk
of countryside and think that you have seen it all. Not so.
The trick is that the benches seem to run together and
envelop a landmark, a ranch, a lake, or even a town. Every-
thing does not meet the eye. You can get lost among these
folds of land in Montana, Wyoming, and parts of the Da-
kotas and Colorado.

Nature displays countless other tricks and variants. Ne-
braska has a big western area called the Sand Hills, a name
of almost exactly literal significance. North Dakota has nu-
merous miniature ponds, called potholes, formed in ancient
times by glacial action. Devils Tower in Wyoming is an
unscalable spire of rock. In South Dakota are the famous
Badlands, where softer materials have worn away and left
fantastic gray shapes of soil and rock exposed over many
square miles. Missouri has sinkholes where storm water dis-
appears into the porous limestone substrata. Yellowstone
Park has its justly celebrated geysers and fumaroles. Several
of the states have buttes — detached, flat-topped hills stand-
ing out on the plains; Scottsbluff, near the Nebraska city of
that name, is a notable example.

A thumbnail description of the Missouri basin was
given in a speech by Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis,
Jr., who succeeded General Pick as Missouri River division
engineer for the Army: "It is a predominantly agricultural
region with large areas of relatively steep slopes and lands
relatively bare, thus greatly subject to erosion."

That statement typifies vast areas west of the semi-
humid belt and all the way to the foothills of the Rockies.

32 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<XX><XX>0<><><>«>^

Nowhere is this more evident than in Wyoming. Scanning
the seemingly boundless reaches of Wyoming from a plane,
you are likely to see billowing, almost barren land in brown
or gray-green; tentacles of darker, richer green vegetation,
spread out dragonwise wherever storm water drains down a
slope or a little stream flows; faint trails, hardly more than
wagon tracks, winding like the path of least resistance to
God knows where; a few scattered habitations; a few towns;
gleaming spots, which are stock ponds that help to identify
scattered dark dots as herds of grazing cattle; and shining
ribbons at long intervals, the blacktop highways or the
single-track railways.

The scene is not too different from aloft over the other
western states of the basin, except that in the others you
are more likely to note the big, scattered wheat fields. The
Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado landscapes are likely to
be backed by mountain walls capped in snow. Sooner or
later you are bound to find a spot where irrigation has
worked its magic. Verily, it can make a desert bloom like
the rose. Where the canals and flumes and ditches have
poured their liquid wonder onto the fields there is verdure.
One side of a road will be a wasteland of sagebrush or a
primitive grass grazing tract, while the other will sustain
sugarbeets, alfalfa, potatoes, small grains, clover, garden
crops, and flowers. That is what water does.

It is dangerous, of course, to oversimplify or generalize
in an effort to describe such a far-flung, varied region. Just
as the terrain changes subtly from east to west across the
basin, so does the way of life. In the main, however, these
latter variations might be traced from south to north, for
to a considerable extent they are a matter of climate. Farm-

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 33

<***X><><><x*X^

houses on the southern edge of the basin, in Kansas, tend
to be roomy, with big porches for the summer heat, and
large outbuildings. There are silos on eastern Kansas farms,
where the corn-hog cycle holds sway as in Iowa. On the
outskirts of the towns in these parts a new note is present,
the result of national policies of farm economy during re-
cent years: a collection of large, round metal bins to hold
the overflow of grains.

Go to the other extreme of the basin, up along the
northern edge of Montana. The houses are small and sim-
ple, built to withstand bitter cold; there are no barns, often
virtually no outbuildings. Up there the wheat and the cat-
tle both move out promptly when their times comes, and
the symbol is the livestock-loading chute at the whistle stop.
Many of the ranchers have two or three fine automobiles
standing at their door, and a lot of modern, mechanized
equipment, yet they still live in shacks.

There are other signs and symbols, too. Along the Platte
Valley in Nebraska in early autumn the traveler is star-
tled by plumes of lurid green vapor drifting over the prairie.
These prove to be fumes from a string of alfalfa mills. Late
summer finds open trucks of purple-red beets queuing up
to reach the sugar factories of northeastern Colorado,
which spread a cloying odor about their neighborhoods.

An unforgettable sight — and sound — in the 1 940*8,
which may diminish hereafter, was the procession of itiner-
ant combines, the harvesting machines, moving north across
the wheat prairies with the season. They made one oppres-
sively hot night in August 1947 at Pierre, South Dakota,
miserable for a weary traveler who could not sleep for the
noise they made. Every few minutes, all through the night,

34 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><*c><X**X><><><^^

a combine and its attendant trucks and cars rumbled up
U.S. Highway 83 and across the little capital city.

Before World War II the old-fashioned practice of
reaping first and then calling in a local threshing crew to
separate the grain was in vogue. Then the combine came
along. It separates as it cuts, pouring bulk wheat directly
into the accompanying trucks, which dash away for the ele-
vator. Always a big business in this bread basket of Amer-
ica, wheat became even more important as the nation took
on world responsibilities. The harvest itself became big
business. By now a good combine may cost $5,000.

So the itinerant harvesters began to roam the plains.
They come from all states and Canadian provinces of the
wheat belt. From the early harvest in western Texas they
cross the Oklahoma Panhandle and work their way through
Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and adjacent states, and
into Manitoba and Saskatchewan, to wind up the season
with the threat of frost already in the air. A big-scale grower
may have as many as twenty-five combines operating along
parallel rows in his lordly fields. If he is smart, he will have
his own machine in the lead to set the pace, for a hasty
cutting may leave some grain untouched. A North Dakota
implement-dealer and landowner said: "I think this prac-
tice of itinerant harvesting may wear out. It doesn't pay
any longer. They get three dollars an acre now, but awhile
back the ranchers were giving them four and a half or five
dollars or more in order to get them to pull in and go to
work."

Mile-long banners of black smoke trail the steady
stream of Union Pacific freight trains over the grades of
Wyoming. At night the outskirts of Helena, Montana, are

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 35

<><><£>«><><><><>O<^C><£<^^

brightened by the strings of lights on a dredge that stead-
ily turns up gold. In the Black Hills of western South Da-
kota, a sort of tumbled-off branch of the Rocky chain, is
Mount Rushmore with its unique portraits in stone. Corny,
the idea seems to some persons, but its lightness appeals
as you gaze on those giant visages on the crest of the moun-
tain— Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore
Roosevelt. Those calm faces, which should remain for ages,
in a way typify the quiet, resolute persistence of the Mis-
souri basin. You look at them and only chuckle at the recol-
lection that in a near-by creek Calvin Coolidge once fished
for sated trout planted for his pleasure.

Thomas Jefferson was responsible for something else
that left its mark on the Missouri Valley and nearly all the
rest of the country west of the Appalachians. This was the
surveying system that set up regular "townships" of 36
square miles, "sections" of a square mile each containing
640 acres, and the resultant divisions that cut many land-
acreage holdings into fractions of 640. In the irrigating dis-
tricts, for example, federal law makes the quarter-section,
160 acres, the maximum for use of water. That constitutes
the "family-sized farm," in distinction from the vast tracts
of big private and corporate dry-farming operators.

This surveying system was set up originally for the old
Northwest Territory, which lay east of the Mississippi, but
it spread into Missouri and on across the continent. In the
flatter districts of Missouri and in the eastern parts of the
tier of states to its west the imprint of this system is most
clear, for there is usually a road of some sort along each
section line, producing a gridiron in mile squares. Nebraska
has been perhaps the most determined in following this;

36 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<x^e«x^><><><x>c><£^^

there, even where the land begins to roll in sharp grades, a
dusty white stone road will doggedly hew to the line, up
hill and down dale. Seen from the air, the fields are check-
erboards; the aerial traveler soon understands the signifi-
cance of the old bucolic phrase about the "back 40." Farther
west in the basin, where the land is rougher and the people
are fewer, the gridiron seldom meets the eye on the ground,
but it will show up in county records and in the faintly
outlined townships in atlases. These townships, inciden-
tally, have nothing to do with administration, and are
utterly unlike their namesakes in New England.

Most of all, the system has affected the way of farming
over a large area of the basin. It bears a not inconsiderable
part of the responsibility for the wasting of much precious
topsoil. A settler bought his farm in squares and rectangles,
and in that form he laid out and tilled his fields. So did his
heirs and assigns and those who came after them. So to this
very day do all too many of the farmers cling to the old
and tried. But wind and water have no sense of the geo-
metric; the wind bloweth where it listeth and the water
seeks its level. And the thinning layer of life-giving topsoil
is gone with the wind or more often washed down gullies
and ravines to swell the silt load of the rivers.

This is no mere academic theory. Take to the plane and
see how "square farming" wastes the land. The gullies,
like crow's feet, and the thin spots show up in profusion.
Fortunately, modern conservation practices have begun to
take hold in the basin, but they are a long way still from
being predominant. "Conservation farming" ignores the
old lines within the farmer's property, but follows the lay
of the land; notably it follows the contours. There are nu-

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 37

<$&&&<><$><><$*^^

merous variations, refinements, and supplements, such as
terracing, grass on buffer strips and odd fragments of land,
fallowing, grassing the natural drainage ways, and building
ponds and check-dams to retain or restrain the water runoff.

Although Uncle Sam is ready with sound technical ad-
vice and, under some circumstances, cash payments to help
the farmer, winning over the naturally conservative tiller
of the soil to new methods is a slow job. Not long ago an
eastern South Dakota conservation farmer related his ex-
perience: "When I started contour farming it got so I
could hardly go to town, I got so much razzing over the
change. Now the boys get me in a corner and ask confi-
dentially what to do about their places."

Uncle Sam is rather like Tommy Atkins out in the Mis-
souri basin: he ought to keep his place, which is the White
House or Wall Street or somewhere like that, when things
are going well in the valley, but he is a great old guy when
you need him. And you need your rich uncle when it comes
to paying for highways and dams and farm aid and a lot of
other things that thinly settled states cannot buy for them-
selves. His boys are much in evidence as a result. Almost
anywhere in the basin you can spot the familiar white tag
on the license bracket: I for the irrigation people and other
Interior Department bureaus, W for the Army Engineers,
A for the various bureaus of the Agricultural Department,
FS for Federal Security Agency. The men who drive and
ride in these cars are a decent, self-respecting lot, usually
given to excessive loyalty to their own particular agencies.
The rank and file are likely to be assigned battered Fords
and Chewies, while a minor executive may turn up in a
snappy station wagon, and the local big shots of the bu-

38 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

«*cX^0<><XX><><^<X^^

reaus go all the way to the Buick class. The shiniest Army
car is sure to turn up with the proper starred red tag affixed
to show the rank of whatever general is around. Further-
more, the Army has a 0-47 to take its brass for the longer
hops, while the Bureau of Reclamation uses a twin-motor
Beechcraft.

When a senator or a congressman turns up at a basin
meeting, it is fun to watch the bureau chieftains button-
hole him. They are always in need of appropriations.

The federal government actually has large responsibil-
ities of long standing in the basin. It owns a vast amount of
the land there. There are seventeen national forests, for ex-
ample, covering 16,789,000 acres. They are to be found
wherever forest growth is heavy from the Rockies to the
Missouri Ozarks, but chiefly in the Rockies. Four fifths of
Yellowstone Park's spectacular expanse, or almost 1,800,000
acres, is within the basin. Nearly three quarters of Rocky
Mountain Park drains to the Missouri. So does the main en-
trance corner of Glacier Park. The National Park Service
also has two other parks and sundry national monuments in
the basin. Included among the latter are the Custer Battle-
field in southern Montana. The Bureau of Indian Affairs
owns about 21,700,000 acres in twenty-four reservations and
institutions. Scattered about are almost 3,000,000 acres in
national wildlife refuges.

More than 20,000,000 acres — 31,250 square miles — of
land in the basin remain in the public domain. This is land
that never has been private, having belonged to the federal
government since the Louisiana Purchase. Much of it is
rough, wild, or barren, but some large tracts are fit for irri-
gation. Occasionally in recent times drawings have been

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 39

<^<XxXx^<^S><><><^^

held for sale of small farms to war veterans who desire to
homestead in the old-time way, but with such new frills
as electricity and a ditch to carry water to the fields. Until
recently a little bit of this land was left within one hun-
dred miles of St. Louis. Sales of tracts in the public domain
have been fairly frequent all over the basin. The largest
areas left in the autumn of 1950 were more than 3,600,000
acres in the Big Horn Valley and a similar area in the North
Platte Valley. Next was about 2,000,000 acres near Fort
Peck Dam.

Much of the federally owned land is in the Rocky
Mountains proper and the various offshoots of the princi-
pal chain. Outstanding among these semi-detached ranges
are the Big Horn Mountains in north-central Wyoming.
Their peaks run up to well over ten thousand feet, and the
few roads that cross them are among the most daring and
trying mountain drives in the country. When viewed from
a plane, some of these thoroughfares seem hardly less nar-
row and steep than the horse trail that ascends lofty Long's

I Peak, a Colorado sentinel of the basin. Long's is one of
several Colorado mountains at the pinnacle of the Missouri
Valley, being over 14,200 feet high. Another is Mount

! Evans, considered hardly more than a suburban park by
Denver people, for the motor road that climbs it is easier,
more spectacular, and slightly higher than the road up
Pike's Peak, near by in the Arkansas basin. The highest
basin point in Wyoming is Gannett Peak, 13,785 feet, on
the Continental Divide in the Wind River Range. Highest
in Montana is Granite Peak, 12,850 feet, just west of the
Red Lodge or Silver Gate highway, the newest and surely
most scenic entrance to Yellowstone Park. The lowest point

4O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><£><><><><><><><£<>^^

in the basin, naturally, is the mouth of the Missouri River,
395 feet above sea level.

While the basin contains many obvious contrasts, the
greater part of it is homogeneous and has a community of
interest. Missouri stands out as essentially different from
the other states if Iowa and Minnesota are overlooked be-
cause of their small areas in the basin. Missouri is more
populous than its western neighbors. It is more industrial-
ized, and has more varied farming. Leafy trees cloak much
of its countryside. Its eyes are inclined somewhat toward
the East and Chicago, for it feels more a part of the broad
Middle West than of the Great Plains. Its tie with the rest
of the valley is somewhat an accident of the geography
that caused the basin to use it for a drain. Indeed, the prob-
lem of Missouri in the basin, like that of the strip immedi-
ately west of it, is to fend off unwelcome flood water that
would be liquid gold if it could be sprinkled over the plains
states.

Wind and water, water and wind! They can make or
break this basin country. Without the wind, the whole
weather cycle would be upset. In many plains and prairie
sections the wind seems never to stop for months on end.
It can blast with the stinging snow of winter or seer in the
summer sun. It can make a nervous wreck out of you, if you
let it, but a lot of the people who grow up accustomed to it
probably would vaguely sense something missing were they
transported to a quiet climate. The wind abetted drought
in creating the Dust Bowl of the thirties, which took in a
large western slice of the Missouri basin. It drifted the fine,
blown earth until fences, then outhouses, then dwelling
doors were buried in dirt. It carried the vagrant dust all the

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 41

«><><><><><><£>^^

way to St. Louis, where housewives battled against it. There
were dust storms in Kansas in the spring of 1950, and the
day after Easter Kansas City was so enshrouded by the
residue that the skyline was blotted out half a mile away.
Back in the drought of 1936 the dust was kicked up in
swirls on country roads on both sides of the river in central
Missouri, while cornstalks withered from green to brown
and died.

It can happen again. The basin has enjoyed a long wet
spell in the weather cycle through the forties and as the
fifties started. Wiseacres shake their heads and declare that
a new dry spell is already overdue.

The old-fashioned windmill still pumps water for live-
stock and even for humans in many sections of the basin. A
new twist has been added for some — a small electric genera-
tor attached to the blade shaft to grind out current for the
farmers.

Weather is not all. Take grasshoppers, for instance.
They got so bad that the 1950 Wyoming Legislature en-
acted a law to control those pesky "leaping orthopterous in-
sects." It set up a five-man control board, put up $750,000
cash, and did not even ask landowners to chip in. Uncle Sam
did some chipping, however. The five-man board did not
have to leap after the 'hoppers. Airplanes did that, cruising
at low level back and forth over extensive areas of the big
state. Young men wearing the inevitable cowboy boots
transferred poisoned bran from motor trucks to planes. Per-
sons attending a river meeting at Casper in June saw a war-
surplus B-i8 bomber being thus loaded. The bomb bays
carried the bran, which was worked out through ducts to
bait the pests. All this effort was important because a

42 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<XcXXXc><Xc><X><><^

visitation of grasshoppers is capable of cleaning out a field
of growing crops.

One index to the nature of the region may be found in a
national telephone census made by the Bell system as of
January i, 1950. The ten states in the Missouri basin (in-
cluding the important areas of some of those states beyond
the basin boundaries) had 11.3 per cent of the telephones
in the country. While these states had then 10.7 per cent
of the country's population, their area is 28.6 per cent of
the nation. What was more significant was that these states
had virtually one third of all the old-fashioned handcrank
phones and only one twelfth of the modern dial instru-
ments. Outside of the big cities the basin states obviously
had none of the mobile phones, the radio instruments in-
stalled in automobiles.

Although 85 per cent of all farms in the nation were re-
ceiving electric service by midsummer 1950, the Missouri
basin lagged behind, with only 75 per cent. A Rural Elec-
trification Administration official explained it this way in a
report to the basin: "This is mainly because of acute power
supply problems in many of your areas. Another reason is
the distance between your farms. In North Dakota, for in-
stance, only about 56 per cent of the farms have electricity;
in South Dakota, 60 per cent, and in Nebraska 73 per cent.
In fact, the larger portion of the nation's farms remaining
to be electrified are located right here in the Missouri basin
states."

This does not mean that there has been no progress: in
1935, before the rural electrification movement was active,
only 8 per cent of the basin's farms had current. The val-
ley's farms are reported to be consuming two billion kilo-

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 43

<x><><x><><><^e><><><><^^

watt hours per year at present, but the Agriculture Depart-
ment predicts that this figure will rise to five billion KWH
by 1960 and eight billion by 1970.

Traveling over this relatively unsettled country can be
pleasant, but is usually difficult to arrange unless you hap-
pen to be moving between points on the few main routes.
Elsewhere the easiest way is to go by private plane or auto-
i mobile. A surprising number of ranchers, cattlemen, and
others fly their own light planes. Cadillacs, Lincolns, Pack-
ards, and Buicks are fairly common. An automobile can
make fast time everywhere but in the mountains, for the
roads are good where they are made, and sight-distances are
excellent. From Missouri to the mountains it is easy to hold
the speedometer at 75 miles per hour or higher much of the
time and actually to traverse 60 or 65 miles every hour. This
can be done safely and in some cases legally.

Most main highways in the northern two thirds of the
Missouri basin are "blacktop" (bituminous macadam)
rather than concrete. This type is cheaper to build than con-
crete and easier to repair, and it notably withstands better
the rigors of extreme heat and cold. There are just a dozen
main roads over the basin from east to west, cutting across
a territory about 600 miles deep, from U.S. 2, below the
Canadian border, to U.S. 40, in central Kansas. Possibly the
most important of all these, from the basin's standpoint, is
the Lincoln Highway, U.S. 30, which stands out on every
map because of the long dip it takes as it follows the Platte
River across southern Nebraska. Main north-south high-
ways— that is, roads that are paved and run pretty well
through the territory — are even less numerous. There are
only half a dozen of them in a span of more than 800 miles

44 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

^<^><^<->^>^^

— and three of these (U.S. 75, 77, and 81) are concen-
trated near the eastern edge of the main portion of the
basin. About the only other ones are U.S. 85, Denver to
Williston, North Dakota; U.S. 87, Denver to Great Falls,
Montana; and U.S. 89, along the western part of the basin
in Montana and Yellowstone Park. Routes that angle across
the basin are almost totally lacking. It is common almost
everywhere to find gaps of from 75 to 100 miles between
main highways — sometimes with nothing but faint trails
within them.

The pattern of the railroad service in this broad valley is
about the same as that of the highways. Half a dozen east-
west trunk lines dominate the area. These are the Great
Northern, the Northern Pacific, the Milwaukee, the Bur-
lington, the Union Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific. East of
Omaha and Kansas City the Wabash also is important. The
Santa Fe, with its crack trains for Los Angeles, streaks across
the lower neck of the basin within a few hours. A few other
roads — such as the Chicago and North Western, the Rock
Island, the Soo, the Katy, and the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio-
serve certain districts.

It is the Pacific coast cities, plus Denver, that have
brought streamlined trains to the Missouri basin routes.
Great Northern and Burlington has the Empire Builder;
Northern Pacific and Burlington the North Coast Limited;
the Milwaukee the Olympian Hiawatha; Union Pacific and
North Western the City of Los Angeles, City of Portland,
City of San Francisco, and City of Denver; Union Pacific
and Wabash the City of St. Louis; the Rock Island the
Roclcy Mountain Rocket; the Burlington the California
Zephyr and Denver Zephyr; the North Western the Dakota

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 45

<$>&tt><$>&X>&$^

400; the Wabash the City of Kansas City; and the Missouri
Pacific the Missouri River Eagle and Colorado Eagle. You
can see more of the Missouri River from the Eagle named
for it than from any other train, but the Great Northern
runs beside some interesting northern stretches of the
stream, while both the Milwaukee and the Northern Pacific
follow the banks close to the river's source at Three Forks.
Sounds like a lot of fancy trains, but it is a long way between
stops on most of them, and perhaps hard going to your
destination if it is off the main line. Some of the roads are
not too keen about booking Pullman rooms for intermediate
points in the Missouri basin, for they usually enjoy a brisk
demand for through accommodations to the "Coast." Most
of them still serve right good meals; the northern lines
especially have managed to preserve some semblance of the
old-time art of dining, even if they do ask about $3.50 for a
steak served at one hundred miles per hour. You can buy
drinks on the trains except in Kansas and Iowa. At least one
weary traveler, however, once failed to get a bracer on the
Northern Pacific in Montana because of some mumbo
jumbo about Indian reservations.

Away from the principal trains the traveler's life can be
rugged. Burlington gives the service from Denver to Billings,
Montana. It is a trip of about 22 hours to cover only 670
miles, only partly mountainous. You can drive the same
route between sunrise and sunset or fly it in a few hours. To
reach much of the basin from its eastern end the best bet
generally is to go by way of Chicago or the Twin Cities.

Aerial travel offers the best opportunity to grasp the
scope and feel of the Missouri basin. But scheduled air-line
routes across the basin, like the other modes of travel, are

46 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><><&<i><><&<<><><^^

limited, with broad gaps. There are TWA and Midcon-
tinent between St. Louis and Kansas City, and Continental
on to Denver. United Air Lines' main route crosses from
Omaha to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and beyond. Northwest
Airlines traverses southern North Dakota and Montana.
Western Air Lines zigzags from Denver to Minneapolis
and St. Paul and cuts northwest from Denver across Wy-
oming, Montana, and Alberta. Midcontinent has a line from
Kansas City to Minot, in northern North Dakota. One
other line, Frontier, flies from Denver to Billings by way of
a series of dog-legs across Wyoming.

A few years ago, when the old Challenger line was op-
erating this part of the present Frontier system, it was as
chummy as a suburban train. They used some old DC-3's
with four rows of narrow seats instead of the usual three,
but often had to keep some of the extra seats vacant to make
up for pay load in the mail and express compartment. One
day they got to the practical limit for number of pas-
sengers and ran into a snag. The ship sat on the ground for
an hour at a little Wyoming city while teletype instructions
from civil aeronautics officials were awaited. Finally the
message came through, and instructions were obeyed. An
attendant shifted one sandbag from nose to tail and th<
were off!

The return trip was delayed. The flight came fro]
Billings, where the airport squats on a high bench. Thei
was fog, and planes have been said to roll off that bench
when leaving or smash into it when trying to land in bad
weather. So Challenger waited for the fog to lift. Then it
began picking up passengers who had a close connection to
make at Denver. None of your fuddy-duddy rules here; this

3. Pathfinder Dam on the North Platte River, Wyoming, built
1905-9. R. D. Dirmeyer, from BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 47

<><>O<x^<X><><><><><^^

pilot was an accommodating fellow even if he did have a
lot of stops to make. He swooped down at a sharp angle,
hesitated on the graveled runways long enough to pick up
a mailbag in the back door as a passenger or two scurried
on or off as the motors idled, and then zoomed the DC-3
into the air in a steep, sharply banked climb. The connec-
tions were made and a good time was had by all, including
a middle-aged drunk who was taking his elderly mother on
her first plane ride.

That Billings airport is not the only tricky one in the
basin. Helena, Montana, for example, has its field in a
narrow mountain cup, and pilots must keep a sharp look-
out, especially in foul weather. At Kansas City the munici-
pal airport nestles behind Missouri River levees, and pas-
sengers sometimes wonder if they are going to drop into the
stream. Pilots approaching that field from the south curse
a new television tower of the Kansas City Star, which
threatens their way. Not long ago the site of some new
apartment houses on a Kansas City bluff was shifted a little
to clear the glide path to the field. Lake Andes, South Da-
kota, near Fort Randall Dam, has one of many rudimentary
grass fields. A press plane landing there once stirred up a
jack rabbit that leaped almost as high as the wing as it
raced through the tall grass. A group of basin specialists
took off in South Dakota one winter evening in fine
weather, but just ahead of a storm. When they finally lo-
cated the Omaha airport through a pall of sleet, their
plane slid and skidded the entire length of the icy field be-
fore it came to a halt.

At most of the dams under construction a streak or two
in the prairie grass denotes the spot on which the contractor

48 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

*>&$>&>><><X><>4^^

has chosen to land his plane. Quite a number of the basin
towns have paved airports that were military fields in World
War II. Grass has grown through cracks of the runways,
and the hangars and wooden barracks are largely shut down,
but commercial and private flying operations go on just
the same. No need for a tower or fancy controls and serv-
ices. An old windsock and a single stationary gasoline pump
with a long hose on a reel will do well enough. If your pilot
makes a mistake and lands downwind on such a field, it does
not much matter — just a bit of bumping.

Rapid City, South Dakota, gateway of the Black Hills,
has an active military field where in the late 1940*5 a hangar
was erected capable of holding two of the giant 6-36 craft,
or three if one is parked with its nose sticking out. The
hangar is a beautiful monolithic concrete arch, tall as a
small skyscraper and big enough to cover a couple of city
blocks. At the time it was finished the only other one like
it was in Maine. To match the hangar, the runways are of
great thickness, to hold the weight of the big bombers.

The airport at Great Falls, in northwestern Montana,
was a busy place and a strange one in wartime. It was there
about 1942-5 that many American fighting planes were de-
livered to Russian pilots, who took them to Soviet terri-
tory. From this field, which is on a broad plateau, where
the air at all seasons seems thin and penetrating, the route to
Siberia was via Edmonton (Alberta) and Alaska. Men of
the Northwest became only too well aware, in the tense
days that followed the outbreak of the Korean war, that
this could be a two-way route.

Ironically, at the other end of the Missouri basin America

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 49

<><><><><><><><><xX><>^

is taking a big step to arm against Russian aggression. At
the St. Louis municipal airport — which, incidentally, is
actually within the basin — a busy factory for some time
has been turning out jet planes for the Air Force. Men and
women at that end of the basin no longer even look up,
day or night, as they hear the quick whoo-o-o-sh of a jet
plane being tested. No use anyway; jets cannot be spotted
except for a few seconds after they take off, though they
may leave a trail of vapor behind.

Talk of aviation often leads to talk of weather. The Mis-
souri basin has plenty of weather. It is a jim-dandy place
for weather. It is not uncommon to find the thermometer
up around no degrees in summer, not only in Kansas and
Missouri but, at midday, far north on the Great Plains. In
winter, below-zero temperatures are customary in the
greater part of the basin and may occur anywhere there. In
Montana and North Dakota the mercury often drops to 30
or 40 below zero, and sometimes even lower. One reference
work says that the lowest temperature ever recorded in the
United States was 66 below zero at Yellowstone Park in

1933-

Vagaries, contradictions, and the bizarre can, and often
do, constitute the weather fare in most of the basin. In
Nebraska the common saying is: "If you don't like the
weather, just stick around awhile — it'll change." It seems
as if the change usually is for the worse. People at a basin
meeting in Lincoln early in December a few years ago
groused about the wind-driven zero weather. Next day they
were awakened by the hotel operator, whose cheery greet-
ing was: "Good morning! The temperature is 22 below."

5O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><><><><^£<x»<^^

With that, a pair of big-city newspaper men dressed hastily
and sought a taxi. Naturally, there was none. Well, a friend
could wangle a state-highway patrol car — but the last one in
town was frozen stiff. A mail messenger took pity and
loaded the visitors into his jalopy. The windshield and win-
dows were so thick with frost that he could barely distin-
guish red from green traffic lights. He got the travelers to
the railroad station on time — even if it was the wrong sta-
tion.

Extremes of weather are the rule, too. An official party
toured to the Dakotas a few years ago about the first of
October, prepared with tweeds and topcoats. Its members
sweltered through an elk-steak dinner the first night, with
the temperature in the QO'S; the next night, only 200 miles
north, they struggled to a pheasant meal through bitter
sleet and high wind. Along the Canadian border mid-Octo-
ber can be shirtsleeve weather or it can bring winter's first
snow and ice.

Operation Snowbound dealt with the worst blizzards the
basin has known in many a long year. Snowstorms in this
region usually are not severe — at least, they do not gen-
erally block any large area. Early winter of 1948-9 brought
a humdinger, however. This series of storms, culminating in
January 1949, sealed 138,000 square miles, chiefly in west-
ern Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming, an area ex-
ceeding that of New England, New York, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware. High, steady winds blocked all the highways
and railroads and, aided by weight of snow and ice, wrecked
many telephone and telegraph lines. Cities and towns were
isolated, and countless lonely ranch families were impris-
oned in their homes with inadequate fuel and food, some

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 51

<£C**X><><XX><><>^^

as long as between sixty and ninety days. Livestock died
because it could not paw down to food or water.

General Lewis A. Pick, then stationed at Omaha as the
Missouri River engineer, was placed in charge of Operation
Snowbound. The Army rushed men and equipment in
volume. Within nine days more than 17,000 miles of roads
were opened to travel, while airplanes dropped feed for
cattle, and supplies for ranchers. This was an instance of
protracted snowfall in an early winter.

Somewhat more than a year later, when spring was due
in 1950, winter had a last fling. This was a worse snow than
before in North Dakota and north-central South Dakota,
covering a quarter of South Dakota. Some persons wanted
the Army called out again, but the governors of the two
states refused, because they felt that the situation could be
handled locally. In South Dakota the state cleared the main
roads and rented equipment to the counties to clear theirs.
The state told the ranchers to rent bulldozers for their own
roads. When the ranchers complained that this would cost
fourteen dollars an hour, state officials asked: "Isn't it worth
the price of a couple of cows to save a hundred and fifty?"

During the night of September 29, 1950, snow fell on
Mammoth Geyser, Yellowstone Park, to a depth of sixteen
inches. About that time the thermometer fell to 10 degrees
in Montana while it rose to 88 degrees in New York City.
Even in June it is not uncommon to find public buildings
in Montana using steam heat. On the night of August 20,
1950 a record audience of more than 11,000 persons sat
in the open-air theater at St. Louis for a Rodgers and Hart
music festival and returned home to find that the tempera-
ture was 49.

52 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

«><><><£><X^<^<£*><>^

Some tales of winter travel adventure have been told by
the barber steward on the Great Northern's Oriental Lim-
ited. He said:

"About 1947 the Oriental picked up a poor Diesel loco-
motive at Havre, Montana. By the time we got to Glasgow,
Montana, with the temperature at 40 below zero, all the
steam and water pipes froze. Finally they got steam up
again and limped into St. Paul, but the pipes kept bursting
and there were puddles on every car floor. We really ha<
trouble the year before when the Oriental was stalled f<
thirty-six hours by a blizzard, between Williston and Stan-
ley, North Dakota. The wind drove the fine, powdery
so hard that it was impossible for the engine crew to
the block signals — yet the ground wasn't even white."

The wind makes a lot of difference. Residents say th<
intense cold is not hard to bear when the wind is still. On(
still morning, with the mercury about 40 below zero, Gov-
ernor Fred G. Aandahl of North Dakota drove his car froi
home to the Capitol in Bismarck without even thinking t(
don gloves.

Unfortunately, the wind blows over the plains a greal
deal of the time, winter and summer. When the tempers
ture climbs to 100 and higher, the wind can drive blistering
heat straight through a speeding automobile. But when th<
blasts of winter howl across the big reservoir back of Foi
Peck Dam, in northeastern Montana, ice forms two an<
one half feet thick. The Army Engineers cut protective
slots around their workboats anchored in a coulee, whicl
is a harbor in a fold of the plains.

In almost any season certain conditions cause fog. Alo]
the lower Missouri at night or in the morning, deep, thicl

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 53

<x^e<><><><><£><>0^

fog may blot out the entire flood plain and stream between
the bluffs for a width of several miles, while the hilltops are
painted with moonlight or sunshine.

Hail is a scourge of the basin. A settler from Iowa man-
aged to pull through four successive seasons of crop failure
on his Montana ranch. The fifth year he had a bumper
stand of wheat. Suddenly, a week before harvest time,
clouds came down from the mountains and hail stripped
the wheat fields bare as he watched helplessly from his door-
way. Not long ago hail fell so hard at Alliance, Nebraska,
that a motorist pulled up beside a boxcar on a railroad sid-
ing for shelter. He barely escaped injury when a gust of
wind tore the roof from the boxcar and dropped it on his
automobile. In August 1950 hail as big as chicken eggs cov-
ered the ground to a depth of two feet near Vermillion,
South Dakota, and fields of flax and corn were laid waste.
Four months later the whole vicinity of the mouth of the
Missouri was whitened as from snow by hail as big as golf
balls; at some places in St. Louis the pellets half-covered
automobiles and destroyed greenhouses.

Floods can be the worst disaster of the basin. They oc-
cur everywhere, even in the arid sections. Most publicized
are the great rolling torrents of relentless, muddy water that
rush down the Missouri proper. Just as bad in their way, at
least for their victims, are the inundations of the tribu-
taries, the little rivers and the creeks. Cherry Creek, nor-
mally an insignificant trickle, has been known in the past to
pick up a cloudburst and sweep destructively through the
heart of Denver. You have to look twice in summer to find
the Kansas River or the Platte, yet they can quickly rise to
submerge rich lands and towns. The Heart River, in central

54 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

&^><X><><^<><><->^^

North Dakota, recently went berserk and cut in two the
main line of the Northern Pacific Railway.

Such a variegated region as the Missouri basin naturally
has an abundance and variety of wildlife. Jack rabbits and
prairie dogs are all over the plains. The mountain fastnesses
have bear, deer, elk, moose, porcupine, the cute little whis-
tling marmot, and ten zillion chipmunks. The raccoon, pos-
sum, and other fur bearers flourish in some sections. Wolves
range the river bottoms almost everywhere, and even today
the county clerks within a few miles of St. Louis pay out
with fair regularity the state's ten-dollar bounty for dead
wolves. Not long ago a motorist ran over a wolf on U.S.
Highway 40 only twenty miles west of St. Louis. A wildcat
has been seen on a badminton court even nearer that city.
These facts need not frighten tourists, for wild creatures
do not leap on passing strangers in the Missouri basin.

In the parks of the Black Hills in South Dakota herds
of bison and antelope range freely near the roads. The bison
can be dangerous to a man trying to mingle with them,
even if he is on horseback. The beautiful little antelope, on
the other hand, is quite timid. There is a farm wife on a
main road near Rapid City, South Dakota, however, who
keeps (or used to keep) a pair of tamed antelopes in her
yard. Deer are to be found in many places where there is
cover, including the thickly wooded central-eastern Mis-
souri. A big buck strayed into St. Louis County recently
and was run down by an automobile.

There has been a great to-do of late over a proposal at-
tributed to the Department of the Interior to permit a
wholesale slaughter of "surplus" elk in Yellowstone Park.
The idea was to let hunters line the route through which

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 55

<><><*£>0<X£<><xX>^

they would be driven. Sportsmen and liberals bitterly op-
posed this, charging it was merely a scheme to provide for
more grazing for the herds of large livestock-owners. To
date the slaughter has been averted.

For the angler, opportunities perforce are limited in a
land of so little water. There are fine sporting trout of the
brook and rainbow varieties in the western mountain
streams. Cold, spring-fed Ozark rivers in Missouri harbor
the game small-mouth bass and imported rainbow trout. In
the Missouri River, especially in its eastern reaches, there
are husky channel catfish and a variety of rough fish that
commercial fishermen take.

The big reservoirs being created in the basin-develop-
ment program are widely acclaimed as fishermen's para-
dises. Without doubt they offer fine fishing in their early
years, but the preponderant opinion in informed circles
seems to be that the quality is bound to deteriorate in time.
Some experience tends to prove this, though instances of
fairly prolonged good fishing are cited in disproof. You can
still take perch and some other game fish, for example, at
Fort Peck Reservoir, which has existed since 1937. Other
denizens of the reservoirs, at least in early years, are bass —
some say that the less sportive large-mouth kind tends to
replace the small-mouth — and a mixture of lesser types.

To many persons the outstanding game of the Missouri
basin has been the beautiful, smart, and tasty Chinese ring-
necked pheasant. South Dakota was its chief habitat for a
long time, North Dakota perhaps next. Literally thousands
and thousands of these birds were to be seen everywhere you
turned in the Dakotas in the autumn of 1945. The follow-
ing year not a single pheasant was observed in a drive of

56 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<£<>00<XX>O<£>0<><^^

hundreds of miles across these states at the same season.
Visiting hunters used to play a big part in the economy of
South Dakota, but now the open season has been sharply
curtailed and the bag limit of nonresidents cut. Some basin
people have a theory, for whatever it may be worth, that
there has been a slow migration of the pheasant population
from the Pacific Northwest through the Great Plains, and
that it is now heading for Wisconsin.

The Missouri and the Mississippi rivers together con-
stitute the nation's greatest flyway for wildfowl. As soon as
cold weather hits Canada, the impressive flights of ducks
and geese start across the Missouri basin. In September and
October they can be seen along the Missouri up north and
in the ponds and potholes that dot much of North Dakota.
Gradually they move to the marshes, dead channels, and
old oxbow loops along the river in the lower basin. You do
not have to be a hunter to be impressed by their beautiful
flying and their noisy quacking and honking.

In the Rockies there is the ptarmigan, a form of grouse
whose feathers blend seasonally with the stones or the snow.
In September 1950 a live stormy petrel, an oceanic bird,
was found in eastern Missouri, apparently blown there by
the tail end of a tropical hurricane. Sea gulls and pelicans
are numerous at Fort Peck Reservoir.

In spite of its contradictions, its loneliness, and its hard
life, the Missouri basin is well loved by a great many of its
people. Something about its vastness, its ever present enig-
mas of nature, grips them. It has a beauty all its own. Go,
for example, on a twenty-mile drive at chilly daybreak in
late summer from the railroad station to Fort Peck. At the
outset the Milk River valley is buried in white fog. Then,

III. HIGH, LONELY, WIND-SWEPT LAND 57

<>&*$*><$><$&<><^^

on the Montana benches, 2,200 feet higher than the distant
sea, the land alternates in strips of wheat and fallow ground,
the one shiny platinum, the other a rich black. The tre-
mendous bowl of dim sky has streaks of clouds and long
fingers of red from the coming sunrise. Tinsel-bright stars
fade slowly. Buffalo grass and other lush growths line the
roadside. The coulees are dotted gray and green with sage-
brush. Once or twice a wary pheasant darts ahead of the
car. Copper and aluminum cables of a heavy power-trans-
mission circuit shine against the horizon. Ahead the lights
of Fort Peck shimmer in the haze. Then, behind the long,
bending gray line of the huge earthen dam, the reservoir
looms into view, cold, blue, and brooding.
It is great country, this Missouri basin!

t 58 ]

<><><^><^<^><><^^

CHAPTER IV

Take Stanley County: It's No Rhode Island

ONE SIXTH of a nation, which is the Missouri basin area de-
scribed heretofore, calls perforce for a great deal of generali-
zation. Let us take a closer look at a single county, one that
fairly typifies vast reaches of the plains country and might be
considered fairly symbolic of the whole valley. Here may be
found a more intimate idea of the hardships and the lonely
life.

Take Stanley County, at the center of South Dakota and
almost at the center of the whole basin. With a direct
flight you could fly there in four hours from Chicago or St.
Louis, but what a different world it is from those crowded,
bright cities!

The Missouri River forms the meandering eastern
boundary of the county, where preliminary work has been
started on one of the big barriers, Oahe (Oh-AW-hee)
Dam. The Cheyenne River, coming down out of the Black
Hills, is the northern boundary. The Bad River, which
rises near the famous Badlands, has cut a rather fearsome-
looking earthen gorge across the southern part of Stanley
County. The county's sole railroad, a branch of the Chi-
cago and North Western, winds and climbs through this
declivity. From aloft, the land has a distinctly mountainous
look where the generally high ground of the county breaks
away toward the rivers. The highest elevation is almost

IV. TAKE STANLEY COUNTY: IT S NO RHODE ISLAND 59

«xX*>S><><><c>C<><xX^

1,800 feet above sea level. One highway, U.S. 14, gravel-
surfaced, crosses the county.

Stanley County covers virtually 1,500 square miles, be-
ing about one fourth again as large as all of Rhode Island,
even allowing for that state's water area. You do not have
to allow much for water in Stanley County. The atlas shows
five scattered towns, the largest being Fort Pierre, a re-
minder of Indian-fighting days. That dusty town, with
stores and other trading centers, a saloon or two, and a few
hundred inhabitants, is the county seat. It is across the
Missouri River from South Dakota's little capital city,
Pierre — universally called Peer in the Dakotas, though it
bears the given name of a French fur trader from St. Louis.

Back in 1920 Stanley County had a population of 2,908.
This dwindled, almost steadily, down to 1,959 in 1940. The
1950 census saw the county pick up a bit — 84 additional
persons, for a new total of 2,043. Chances are that the work
on Oahe Dam was at least partly responsible for this rise.
Strangely enough, this county's gain, percentage-wise, was
four times as great in the last decade as that of all of South
Dakota. Stanley administers the neighboring county to the
north, Armstrong, which has 12 taxpayers, 40 other residents
(mostly Cheyenne Indians), and no local government, not
even a post office.

There are 468 acres per person in Stanley County, or
about one and one third persons per square mile. The beef
cattle appreciably outnumber the people. Put it another
way: suppose some power were to descend on New York's
teeming Central Park and drive out all the people except
two — the park would be more heavily populated by that re-
maining couple than Stanley County is today.

60 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

^^<^><^><^><^^

At a meeting of the Missouri Basin Interagency Com-
mittee, Stanley County was the theme of a thoughtful
paper prepared by Alfred L. Johnson, representative of the
Production and Marketing Administration of the federal
Department of Agriculture, stationed at Huron, South Da-
kota. While naturally the author of the paper presented his
Department and his particular bureau of that Department,
PMA, in a good light, what he had to say lacked political or
philosophic bias. PMA, as most people know, has been en-
gaged in supporting farm prices, setting acreage allotments
for farmers, handling marketing quotas, aiding in food dis-
tribution, and promoting agricultural conservation prac-
tices. Much of its work, needless to say, is controversial. The
conservation program it has followed since 1933 comes into
conflict at some times and places with a roughly similar
program of the Soil Conservation Service, another bureau
of the federal Department. But Stanley County obviously
likes PMA, and ruggedly Republican South Dakota wel-
comes this New Dealish federal aid. What Mr. Johnson had
to say was stated from the point of view of an earnest public
agency fulfilling its duty; much of his paper is quoted here
with his permission.

Stanley is one of the state's driest counties, Mr. John-
son said, despite the fact that more than 125 miles of its
borders are rivers. Annual precipitation is only sixteen
inches, much of which comes as snow, not as rain at crop
time. He continued:

"There isn't much rainfall in Stanley County, and
through the centuries most of the rain has run off into the
Cheyenne, the Bad and other tributaries of the Missouri,
and into the Big Muddy itself. The soil is black but only

IV. TAKE STANLEY COUNTY: IT'S NO RHODE ISLAND 6l

<><><><><><><^O<><><>^^

moderately fertile. The shale material from which the soil
is derived was deposited as a salty clay in an inland sea mil-
lions of years ago. The glaciers that smoothed out the coun-
try east of the river missed most of Stanley County. The
land surface in the county was formed by erosion and it
still erodes easily unless properly managed. When the water
runs off the unprotected land and fills the creeks and the
streams and the rivers and finally gets to the Missouri, it
takes with it a lot of the soil of this county. That's one of
the reasons why the Missouri is called the Big Muddy.

"Properly managed, the soil produces a good stand of
nourishing grass — western wheatgrass, buffalo grass, and
other native grasses for livestock. There is, normally, mois-
ture enough in the soil to produce grass for the livestock,
but the limiting factor has been water — water for livestock
to drink and water for people to drink. What about wells?
It is a common saying in Stanley County that it is five miles
to water — five miles across and five miles down. The clay
shale beneath the thin topsoil, extending to a depth of
probably 1,500 feet on the average, is not porous enough to
hold [that is, draw from the surface] any usable quantity
of underground water such as is found in some of the
glaciated areas east of the river. So Stanley County people
and livestock have to depend on surface water, the water
they can save out of the rain and the snow. It's the job that
has been done in catching the surface water and making
use of it that makes the greatest accomplishment in the
conservation activity of PMA in Stanley County."

Mr. Johnson went back to 1935 to tell a little about the
county before this range program got under way. Outside of
Fort Pierre the people then were scattered over 350 ranches.

62 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><^e>0<><^c><^<£>^^

Most of the county's nearly 960,000 acres was in range,
where livestock grazed precariously. Then and now perhaps
only 50,000 acres were planted to crops, but there was no
irrigation. Plow most of that land, and the grass cover dis-
appears, followed speedily by the topsoil. He went on:

"You remember the beating that South Dakota as a
whole took in the thirties from low prices and the droughts
of '34 and '36. Stanley was one of the counties that was
hardest hit, with some changes that have lasted, but by now
not all of them seem bad. There were a great many families
that lost their homes, their livestock, and their land; some
in '34 and more in '36. You remember how the federal gov-
ernment bought up cattle in this state and shipped them to
states that had enough feed and water, simply to keep the
animals from dying of hunger and thirst.

"There were about 34,000 animal 'units' in the county
in 1934, which was a high point in livestock numbers for
that period. (A unit is one cow, one horse or five sheep.)
By 1937 hard times had forced the livestock total down
almost one half, to 18,000 units. Ranchers weren't even
able to keep up their foundation herds. The animals they
could keep were so thin you could hang your hat on almost
any part of any cow in Stanley County. The owners of a
good many of those cattle packed up and went to other
regions where there was a better chance to keep alive. They
haven't come back. There are about 100 fewer ranches in
the county today — 250 compared with 350, and their size
has gone up more than fifty per cent to about 3,900 acres
in the average holding.

"When a family got burned out by a drought back in

IV. TAKE STANLEY COUNTY: IT'S NO RHODE ISLAND 63

<»<XXX><>C><><><^^

the thirties, there was usually a sale of a certain amount of
land to one of the neighbors who was able to stay. But for
the most part the land became simply tax-delinquent land.
And there were times when the county officials didn't have
enough money in the treasury even to do the necessary ad-
vertising to take title to the land.

''What about those farmers who were able to stick it
out? What was it they had that the other fellows didn't
have? Greater strength of character, greater fortitude? Not
necessarily. In most cases it was a supply of water, usually
in the form of a tiny pond backed up by a little dam thrown
across a gully by a homesteader twenty-five or thirty years
earlier. When we counted those dams in 1937 we found
only about 150 of them in the entire county — just about
one dam and stock pond for each rancher that was able to
stick it out during the blistering thirties.

"I guess it took two severe droughts in this part of the
country to convince the federal government that there were
things that needed to be done and could be done in the
range country. At any rate, it was in 1937 that the federal
range program got started and the committee of farmer
administrators in Stanley County began to explain to the
other ranchers what assistance the government would offer.
The big emphasis was on building water facilities on the
range. For the most part, that meant constructing an earth
dam across a gully to catch the runoff. It wasn't quite that
simple, because the government was offering to repay the
rancher for a considerable part of his out-of-pocket expense
in constructing a dam. We were insisting that each dam be
a good one, that would last for years without washing out,

64 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<*£><S>0<£<><><><£><><^

and that would hold enough water. From the very begin-
ning we drew on the research of agencies experienced in
facilities for storing water on the land.

"We knew that the rate of evaporation in western South
Dakota was so high in summer that we'd have to allow five
or six feet of water in a pond for evaporation alone. We
learned that a dam needs a certain slope on the front and
a different slope on the back. We learned about spillways
and trickle tubes. Those things all went into the plans and
into the dams that the ranchers began to build with finan-
cial and technical help from our organization.

"It takes a contractor who has sizable earth-moving
equipment to build a good earth dam. The typical dam, at
least in Stanley County, is built of 4,000 or 5,000 cubic
yards of earth. The contractors who do most of the earth-
moving charge 12 to 15 cents a cubic yard. The rancher can
recover part of the cost of building the dam, if it is properly
located; if it meets prescribed specifications; if it has been
determined by the farmer committeemen of PMA that the
dam is needed, and after requirements under state law have
been complied with by the rancher. The most any farmer
can receive for installing all conservation measures in any
year is now $750; in 1948 the maximum was $500."

Mr. Johnson provided a graphic demonstration with his
paper of the great increase in water-storage facilities in Stan-
ley County within thirteen years. There, as in many other
sections of the Missouri basin, the arid plains have been
dotted with big and little ponds. He continued:

"The county now has almost 1,300 ponds, some of them
small lakes. There used to be less than one pond to two
ranches; now there is an average of five to each ranch. It

IV. TAKE STANLEY COUNTY: IT'S NO RHODE ISLAND 65

<^>^<>0<><><><><>e>^^

used to be one water facility to 6,000 acres; today there's a
pond to every 800 acres on the average. I think it's safe to
say that there isn't a ranch in Stanley County that doesn't
have some kind of water facility. Most of them, of course,
have more than one.

"The number of people is smaller today, but they're
making better use of the land, and they've bought more
than 120,000 acres from the county, which had had to pos-
sess it for tax delinquency. The taxes are pretty well paid
up today, thank you. The livestock has come back, on what
looks like a permanent, sound basis. The number is higher
now than it has ever been and there's still no sign of over-
grazing. Stanley County always has produced excellent grass
and plenty of it. Almost every rancher has had acres and
acres of grass that wasn't well grazed because he didn't have
water enough to support the animals that the grass could
feed. Today, the supply of water and the supply of grazing
seem to be getting somewhere near in balance.

"The chairman of the county PMA committee was
asked a few days ago what he thought would happen if we
were to enter another dry cycle such as we had in the
thirties. Would it be necessary to ship out cattle to keep
them from dying? Would ranchers lose their shirts, their
homes, their livestock again? His answer was: 'No. Of
course, a drought wouldn't be good. But there's hardly a
rancher in the county who doesn't have two years' supply
of water on his place right now, enough water to take at
least his foundation herd through two drought years in a
row. We're fixed for it now because we have water.' So the
water-facilities program has put a firm foundation under
the livestock industry."

66 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><*£*><><><><><X^^

Incidentally, the many new ponds have proved to be ex-
cellent places for fishing; they have attracted ducks to a
county that never knew them before; and they are credited
with increasing the local pheasant and grouse population.
Mr. Johnson remarked: "When Stanley County ranchers
get together these days, you may not hear them talk about
Hereford blood lines or the relative merits of crested wheat
and gramma grass. More likely they'll be boasting about the
size of the bass in their lakes."

The PMA representative also made it clear that he had
chosen to talk about one specialized type of soil conserva-
tion and one particularly aggravated problem, which is be-
ing solved. He did not pretend that all the answers had
been achieved, either in this county or in the multitudinous
and vastly more complicated and varied troubles of the en-
tire Missouri basin. What he did succeed in doing was to
turn basin officials for the moment from the vast scope and
Gargantuan data of the broad basin concept to a closer
focus, in which some of the people, and the lives they lead,
came into view.

Then, in conclusion, he, too, turned to the broader
view, as he pointed out the significant relationship of the
minor, local improvement in Stanley County to the thread
of the grand design for the basin. He said:

"A grass and livestock economy is important; in fact,
I'd say it is essential if we are going to make the best pos-
sible use of the soil and the water. That is true, not only in
Stanley County, but over all of the state. One end of Oahe
Dam (a huge, multi-million-dollar earthen project) will be
in Stanley County, and this county's soil is subject to ero-
sion. Unless we keep the soil in place with a tight cover of

IV. TAKE STANLEY COUNTY: IT'S NO RHODE ISLAND 6j

<$>&&&&&>><&2><-^^

grass at all times, we'll have Oahe and the other mammoth
and costly dams reduced in effectiveness long before their
appointed time, by accumulation of eroded silt in the reser-
voirs. The clay shale of Stanley County was originally de-
posited by water, and water could wash it away. I am con-
fident that it won't do that, however, to a serious degree, be-
cause grass and livestock go together if there is water — and
there will be water in Stanley County because the people
are working effectively to get it."

[ 68 ]

<^><^<-><^><^-><-><^^

CHAPTER V

People: between, the Vikings and the Elizabethans

ON THE surface, people of the Missouri basin live much
like the rest of America in many aspects. They are reason-
ably informed on national and world affairs. They follow
the World Series ball games eagerly. Their chain stores
carry the same nationally known brands as in Massachusetts,
Arizona, or Florida. Betty Grable appeals to them, but so,
too, do the most lurid cowboy movies. A new note on the
prairies and plains is found in the drive-in theater screens
that loom oddly on the horizons. Even the little towns are
garlanded with neon signs, like imitation clusters of rubies.
Except in the larger cities, high-school social and athletic
affairs take on a surprising importance. The basin has the
same quaint belief in the necessity and civic distinction of
stop-and-go signals that the rest of America indulges. It
has its churches, but a great many of them have the air of
a hard struggle to survive. There are the usual rural and
town civic and "service" groups. The yellow school bus of
the modern consolidated district is a familiar sight. In the
towns and cities life is not greatly different from that in the
rest of the nation's urban communities, except as influenced
by regional interests, products, and climates.

It is in the ways of the field that some of the more
subtle differences of life between this basin and the rest

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 69

<xX>0<><><><><><£<>^^

of the country may be traced. There is vast distinction be-
tween the daily problems of the sheep-raiser in Montana
and, say, the chicken-farmer of the Delmarva Peninsula;
between the outlook of the man who grazes white-faced
beef cattle by the hundreds on the cold northern plains and
that of the Kentucky horse-breeder; between the philoso-
phy of a big-scale gambler on wheat in the dry lands and
that of a Maine potato-farmer, or between the mental reac-
tions of a hard-working irrigation farmer and those of a
Georgia peach-grower.

Far less subtle are the distinctions caused by national
background. The basin, to be sure, is part of the American
melting-pot, but it has to a surprising extent a system of
settlements by people of common family-tree origin. Pre-
dominant are the Scandinavians. People with roots in
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are strong in both Dakotas,
Nebraska, and parts of Kansas and show up elsewhere. They
are hardy, earnest, and largely successful people, good in ag-
riculture, business, or politics. They take naturally to this
colder climate.

One brisk June day in central Wyoming, when some
visitors were donning jackets for a drive, sturdy old Einar
Dahl, down from northern North Dakota, drawled: "I
hope it isn't warm today; I don't like it warm."

It is a standing joke at civic meetings throughout a large
slice of the basin for the politicians to call off, in a sort of
Edgar Bergen dialect, the names of men who are or have
been recently governors of these "Scandinavian-American"
states. Without attempt to imitate the caressing pronuncia-
tions, the list runs something like this: Aandahl, Anderson,
Brunsdale, Carlson, Mickelson, Peterson, Youngdahl. Even

70 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<>0<X><><><><><^^

the politicians with German names will run through this
list with relish: it gets them on the band wagon.

If there is any strife among these three Scandinavian
groups, it cannot be very far-reaching. Certainly they mix
well in public matters. I have seen Swedes, Danes, and
Norskes drinking and singing lustily together at a fishing
camp. Only the initiate can tell the difference anyway; let's
see, Jensen with an e is a Dane, but with an o it's a Swede
— or is it the other way around?

In both North Dakota and South Dakota the Nor-
wegians far outnumber the Swedes, to draw such conclu-
sions as are possible from state-wide census data. In Ne-
braska the Swedes lead and the Norwegians do not show up
in force, but the Danes do — Nebraska has a noticeable tinge
of Danish culture. On the other hand, the Danes are rela-
tively few in North Dakota.

Whole communities in North Dakota are Russian in
flavor and national origin. They are Americanized only in
some ways. Often they are marked by the onion-shaped
spires of Greek orthodox churches, which otherwise may be
the same dreary frame structures as those of the local evan-
gelical sects. This Russian influx was attracted years ago,
largely from the Ukraine, by the fact that these northern
plains offered much the same sort of wheat-growing as these
people had known in the land they wished to forsake. West-
ern Nebraska also has Russian settlements.

In every state of the basin the German background shows
up strong. It is part of the historic immigration that started
about 1848. In Nebraska, for instance, there are communi-
ties in which the pattern of life retains the imprint of
Teutonic orderliness and thrift.

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS Jl

<x>e<x><><><^c><><>e^^

Montana and perhaps sections of Wyoming and Colo-
rado have proudly among their populations the descendants
of English "remittance men" — the younger or ne'er-do-well
sons of wealthy English families who were shipped off to
the Golden West in the nineteenth century and supported
by regular remittances or retainers from home.

Traces of Mexican origin are to be found here and
there, in limited extent, in the Colorado portion of the
basin and in Wyoming.

A fairly large number of Nebraskans count their heritage
back to Czechoslovakia.

Four of the more northerly states of the basin — Mon-
tana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and South Dakota — have
enjoyed marked influxes of people from Canada. They are
non-French Canadians, and in all probability came mainly
from the neighboring high, flat wheat provinces : Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The Canadian border extends
for about 400 miles within the confines of the Missouri
basin, from eastern Montana to the edge of Glacier Na-
tional Park. In all this distance maps show only about a
dozen roads across the border, none of outstanding im-
portance and many of them quite minor. But for the lack of
roads, this is one of the world's easiest borders to cross, and
people do visit back and forth. Canadian economic restric-
tions, however, have cut down some of the trade that Mon-
tana and North Dakota used to enjoy.

The Iowa slice of the basin has more or less the char-
acteristics of the people of that whole state, which so often
is treated as the typical American farm state.

In populous Missouri you find a bit of everything. In the
western part the farmers are an intermixture of Yankee and

72 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><xXx£><X>C><^<><><>^

German. Where Missouri's southern edge of the basin im-
pinges on the Ozark Mountain country, the people still
have some folkways that can be traced to the Elizabethans,
straight through the Anglo-Saxon stocks that penetrated
the low mountains of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.
The most easily distinguishable human strata in Missouri,
however, are in two strips bordering the river near the east-
ern side of the state. A tier of river counties, mainly on th<
south side of the stream, is known as the Missouri Rhine-
land, while on the north side is a sector known as Little
Dixie. The Rhineland is strongly, whole-heartedly Ger-
manic, stanchly Republican, and traditionally Catholic. II
raises grapes, for it likes wine. Little Dixie is a Democratic,
Protestant, horse-raising, horse-loving country, with
Negro servants and farmers. It runs to bourbon and pretl
women.

All this talk of national origins deals mainly with back-
grounds one, two, or three generations, or even longer, re-
moved. It is a safe conclusion that the Missouri basin ac-
tually has a remarkably low percentage of foreign-bon
residents. Breakdowns of census data unfortunately are nol
available for the basin proper. Perusal of state-wide figures,
in the light of knowledge of the region in question, justifies
the conclusion.

It is a white man's country. Where once none but th<
proud Indian roamed, there now are only about 70,000 In-
dians in the basin, the Department of the Interior esti-
mates. They have fallen on a sad and humble way of life:
not for these Indians a new Cadillac every time the olc
one runs out of gas. Nor are there many Negroes; it is doubt-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 73

&&&^<*><M><&Z^^

ful if the basin has as many as 150,000 Negroes, and they
reside mostly in and near the few larger cities. North Da-
kota had only 201 Negroes in the 1940 census. Almost all
of the big Negro population of metropolitan St. Louis lives
outside the boundary of the basin, which, however, skirts
one miserably abject suburban slum, Kinloch, home of
more than 5,000 Negroes. Chinese and Japanese are nu-
merically negligible in the basin states.

By and large, classlessness is marked in the basin. One
man is as good as another, regardless of bank account or
family lineage. In most of this country any man who can
stand up against the elements is worthy of recognition, no
matter what his walk of life. Besides, a man can be rich
today and poor tomorrow — or the other way around: distant
grain or cattle markets, the elements, or some other quirk
of fate may cast the die. They tell the story of a man in
North Dakota who was flat broke in the 1930*8. He got one
good wheat crop on his small place and began building up
from that. The bankers counseled him to go slow, but in-
stinct urged him to push on. He has increased his holdings
to 20,000 acres and he owns 10 combines. In 1949 he was
reported to have cleared $300,000 net before deducting in-
come taxes.

The basin contains less than a dozen manufacturing
centers of large importance. Because this is essentially an
agricultural area, the main employment is in that field, plus
the service trades in the towns and the jobbing centers that
distribute clothing, shoes, groceries, beverages, tobacco, and
other staples. To be sure, the basin has gold-miners and
agronomists, airplane mechanics and biochemists, and so

74 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<X£*X>O<X><><X^<><>^^

on; but the man in the tractor seat and in the sturdy West-
ern saddle (without fancy trimmings) dominates the re-
gional economy.

It is a land of simple tastes, easy hospitality, and in-
formality. Almost any town in the basin will make the
stranger feel at home; towns like Loveland, Colorado, and
Riverton, Wyoming, for example, go far out of their way
to be hospitable. Loveland gives convention visitors free
tickets, good in any public eating-place, for a generous slice
of pie made of the neighborhood's famous cherries.

Cooking for public consumption in the Missouri basin
rarely is of a quality to excite the gourmet, but frequently
is good. Meals usually are of the substantial, "satisfying"
variety, without fancy dishes or great culinary inspiration.
If there is an outstanding regional dish, it is beef, which
generally is excellent, served as steak or roast. Among the
places where I have enjoyed fine meals are the Bellerive
Hotel at Kansas City, the Jayhawk at Topeka, the Fonte-
nelle at Omaha, the famous Brown Palace and an Italian
restaurant at Denver, the Dude Corral at Loveland, a little
South Dakota country club whose location I have forgot-
ten; the Montana Club and a roadhouse at Helena, the
Rainbow Hotel at Great Falls, the Northern at Billings,
the Frontier and the Plains at Cheyenne, and a roadhouse
near Bismarck. Alas! there are too many other establish-
ments— mostly but by no means all in the smaller towns —
where my eating has been done as a necessary habit rather
than a pleasure.

Private entertainment can be different. There was, for
instance, the night when visiting rivermen were guests of a
wealthy oil operator at Cody, Wyoming. An old-time hunt-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 75

<><*><><><£0<><><>O<^^

ing guide cooked venison and other game in the patio,
while the host's friends and neighbors tended bar in the
game room. There was a meal! That was the night, in-
cidentally, when some Republican governors amused them-
selves by tossing darts at a crayon sketch of John L. Lewis,
and a Democratic Senator put for cover when a naive pho-
tographer sought to catch him in the game.

This is a bourbon country. The Easterner who asks for
Scotch will not be shot at or even frowned upon by the
bartender, but he may get sweet soda instead of sparkling
water by a mere call for "Scotch and soda." On the other
hand, in a great many bars, notably in Montana, an order
for a "ditch high" is perfectly well understood; it means a
highball concocted of bourbon whisky and the stuff that
runs in irrigating ditches. One Sunday morning I was
awakened by a happy group of mixed Scandinavians who in-
sisted that I sit up in bed and gulp a tumbler of bourbon
mixed with sugar and a touch of water. It was not bad,
either. One prominent Scandinavian-American, Governor
Val Peterson of Nebraska, part Dane and part Swede in
lineage, comes near being a teetotaler. When he is pressed,
his favorite tipple is a Danish cordial called cherry Heering,
whose alcoholic wallop would scarcely faze a mouse.

One of the nation's longest bars used to stand on the
bare prairie alongside the Soo Railroad in North Dakota. It
was a few miles from the scene of construction of Garrison
Dam, but neither it nor the numerous other lures of the
kind seemed to attract the great outpouring anticipated
from the latter-day construction workers. Unfortunately the
long bar burned down.

Kansas and Iowa have been the driest of the basin states,

76 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><x><><x^e*c><><>o^

legally speaking. Since the repeal of prohibition the only
legal liquor in Iowa has been "package" (bottle) goods in
state-owned stores, but it is doubtful that any larger Iowa
town has lacked a place where you could go and buy a
drink; a legitimate club perhaps, though not necessarily
limited to the well-to-do, or a fraternal organization, or jus
a "key club," where a fellow made the requisite arrange
ments, became possessor of a key, and let himself at wil
into a full-fledged saloon.

Kansas is another matter. Doggedly the good people o
Kansas clung to prohibition until 1949, while trucks anc
other vehicles poured the stuff all over the state year in anc
year out. A really thirsty person never had any difficulty in
finding a slaking-place. Shortly before Kansas woke up anc
legalized liquor — package goods only — a couple of news
paper men from the East were assigned a suite on the main
floor of a hotel, built circa 1875, in a northern Kansas town
They found delightful rooms with tall, picturesque win
dows (incidentally lacking shades), some after-thought
plumbing in a dark corner, and some really good antique
walnut furniture with marble tops. The guests, who were
not apprised of the hotel's modern annex, were told that
this was the gubernatorial suite. Settling down to their writ-
ing tasks, they were soon surprised to note a stream of ac-
quaintances and even perfect strangers passing through the
suite, from the lobby writing-room to a back door. Then
the basement below the suite grew noisy with laughter,
jukebox music, and clinking glasses. It proved to be the
town's main speakeasy, whose only interior entrance was by
way of the ' 'gubernatorial suite" and a cavernous "secret"
staircase. The place had an innocuous basement street en-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 77

<><*X*X>C><>0<><>0^^

trance also, with a mirror in the door — a mirror to the hope-
ful customer, that is; from inside it was a full-scale scanning
screen for studying the would-be entrant. It also was
equipped with a collection of dirty phonograph records
that no wide-open saloon would tolerate.

Nebraska has local option by counties; some are dry,
some are wet. Omaha is legally wide open, but not far away
the capital, Lincoln, is in a non-saloon county. There the
visiting politicians and native thirst-bearers have to buy bot-
tles and pour their own drinks at steak houses, a specialized
kind of restaurant. In Montana the state is the liquor whole-
saler, a situation that would appear to be ready-made for
political pressures. Some of the most picturesque saloons,
with old-time flavor, are to be found in Montana, Wy-
oming, and the mountain towns of Colorado. They really
are not too different from the cafes of Times Square, the
Loop, or Nob Hill — no shooting and no wild-eyed prospec-
tors. Yet there is a different feeling, perhaps owing to the
breezy everyday garb or the easy-going ways of the cus-
tomers. At that, it is surprising how many liquor emporiums
in all parts of the basin, including some pretty small towns,
have gone modern, with chrome, neon lights, plastic leather
cocktail nooks, and waitresses in fancy aprons.

Missouri permits full sale by the drink, but only in in-
corporated cities of 20,000 or more, while package liquor is
available everywhere. The 1950 census raised some difficulty;
for instance, Columbia, seat of the state university and other
colleges, found itself raised to the saloon class and began to
worry. Missouri law since repeal piously omits using the
vicious term "saloon"; "tavern" seems to be preferred, but
they are saloons just the same. A puzzling legalistic twist of

78 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<*><><>O<X*£><><>0<^^

the Missouri code is the strict observance of Sunday, by the
clock. On weekdays saloons can stay open until one thirty
a.m., but on Saturday, the big night, they are required to
close at midnight. Some of them, however, take advantage
of the other face of the clock and reopen at midnight Sun-
days for an hour and a half.

South Dakota law permits cities to have local monopo-
lies of the retail liquor trade. Several of the smaller cities
have taken advantage of this, including Pierre, the capital.
In 1949 Pierre, which had 5,700 people, made a net profit
of about $80,000 from its "municipal cocktail lounge," the
only saloon in town. In spite of common theories of keep-
ing the government out of private enterprise, supporters of
this device say it works well in communities where dry senti-
ment is strong and commercial bars might not be tolerated.

The New Yorker reported not long ago that Northwest
Airlines is the only domestic air route serving liquor. Among
states for which it holds liquor licenses are both Dakotas
and Montana, but, the magazine said, "over South Dakota
it's illegal to serve a spendthrift."

It is sometimes a strangely conservative region. At a
banquet one evening a newspaper man was seated between
the wives of two basin governors. They were away from their
home states, in a friendly crowd, and at an inconspicuous
table, but they quailed when cigarettes were offered, though
both smoke. One accepted a cigarette and smoked it rather
furtively for fear her husband might see her from the speak-
ers' table, but she declined a second. The other lady took a
rather longing look at the pack, but said that her husband
would be furious if she smoked in public.

Turning to gaudier vices than the cigarette, the Mis-

5. Medicine Creek Dam, southern Nebraska. The dam is built

of rolled earth, is faced with stone, and has a concrete spillway.

Lyle C. Axthelm, from BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

6. How irrigation works. The broad ditch, winding down a nat-
ural grade, feeds lateral ditches that serve farm fields. The high
ground at right center is dry. BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 79

<><><><><^e**£><x>0<^^

souri basin is a pretty clean area. Time was, in the heyday
of Boss Tom Pendergast, when Kansas City was the most
sinful place in America. Gambling was wide open there.
The boss had a state road paved extra wide to serve a race
track he sought to promote. There was a restaurant where
the waitresses wore high heels, a smile, and an apron. All
that is gone. Since the theft of ballots from a courthouse
vault a few years ago and the later murder of would-be boss
Charles Binaggio, Kansas City has become a quiet, peace-
able city.

Council Bluffs, Iowa, has had some experience with
gamblers in the nation-wide efforts of the easy-money boys
to run wild in recent times. It is an industrial satellite of
metropolitan Omaha, across the river.

In most of the basin, however, it would be hard to find
any gambling other than a poker game in a back room or an
occasional slot machine. It has been different in Montana,
however. Slots were numerous there under a law permitting
them in non-profit "social" clubs. I joined such a club once
in company with a Senator's secretary and a leading liberal
(the latter used a fake name) . This club was the side room
of a saloon in Billings. To join, you gave your name to a
man at a little table in the open doorway; he said "All right,"
and you were thereupon a member with all the rights,
privileges, and appurtenances thereunto belonging. The ap-
purtenances were two long rows of one-armed bandits for
every coin from a nickel to the silver dollar. At the social
club in Helena, the capital, where someone will vouch for
almost any stranger who wears a coat and necktie and is
not definitely known to be opposed to the vested interests,
the rows of slot machines are a bigger attraction than the

8o THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

«*£><><>o<><^e<><><x><^^

busy bar or the well-laid dinner tables. In the 1950 election
Montana voted down by 2 Vz to i a proposal to permit gen-
eral, wide-open operation of slot machines under county
option. In the campaign against the scheme, the left-wing
People's Voice of Helena said: "$20,000,000, plus, was the
estimated 'take' of one-armed bandits in Montana during
1949. This represented for the most part money that DID
NOT go to pay grocery bills, buy shoes for the kids and gen-
erally contribute to a more prosperous life for all the people
of Montana. Should the racket be given the green light for
wide-open operation, with slots in cafes, stores, filling sta-
tions, as well as liquor-gambling joints, the drain on our
state's economic life could easily be doubled."

Travelers at Helena as late as 1945 swore that they
found a neon sign on the main street, the erstwhile "golden
gulch" of mining days, advertising the location of a well-
known bawdy house. The lady who ran it sometimes sat on
a stool at a popular saloon-cafe next to a prominent profes-
sional man and discussed her business problems with him
while they had breakfast.

Every state in the basin has its public university and
agricultural college. Some of these are noted in given fields
of learning — also, from time to time, in football. Neverthe-
less, a lament for years, particularly in the western and
northern portions of the basin, has been that many of the
more promising young people of both sexes leave home to
seek careers because they cannot find sufficient opportunity
in this region.

There are, in this hinterland, and by no means confined
to its larger cities, plenty of evidences of culture, good
taste, and good breeding, but they seldom obtrude. One of

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 8l

&£>&$><&<X>$><>><$>^^

the external evidences is to be found in the architecture of
many public, private, and semi-public buildings. Two ex-
amples of good contemporary design come to mind: the
conservatively done City-County Building at Casper, Wyo-
ming, and a Catholic church on modern lines at Bismarck,
North Dakota. Eight of the basin states have capitols in the
traditional dome style, but Nebraska and North Dakota
have outstanding examples of twentieth-century design.
Nebraska's is a striking white stone shaft. Some persons
consider North Dakota's simple tower design of granite and
marble even more impressive. It is a masterpiece in its way.
It gleams against the horizon on a bench above Bismarck.
Inside, its ornamentation is restrained but telling. One of
the boasts about it is the economy with which it was erected
not many years ago.

The Missouri basin is not known as the home of many
writers of note. It does have, for example, however, such a
well-known regional author as Joseph Kinsey Howard, of
Montana fame. Gene Fowler came out of Denver. It has
had its cowboy painters in the past. Today's outstanding
artist in the basin surely must be Thomas Hart Benton,
of Kansas City. Some of his notable murals grace the Capi-
tol at Jefferson City, Missouri. No doubt the most widely
circulated painting of the Missouri basin was the bright,
romanticized version of Custer's Last Stand. The work of
Cassily Adams, who came out from the East, reproductions
of it were distributed among many of the nation's saloons
by Anheuser-Busch, the justly celebrated St. Louis brewery.

Almost everywhere in the basin, as in most of America,
the live theater has disappeared, except for those relatively
few cities and towns with little-theater movements. Only

82 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

«*X>0<><c><><><><><^^

several larger cities get the limited professional productions
still on the road. Central City, Colorado, with its ambitious
summer shows, nestles in the mountains just inside the
basin. But it is a rare town that offers any real choice be-
tween movies.

In one South Dakota town the downtown streets echo
pleasantly at times with the music of a carillon. A tired mo-
torist may be passing through town and find his thoughts
lightened by the calm strains of Faith of Our Fathers.

Hotels, in their way, are a reflection of local culture.
Plenty of Missouri basin towns, and some cities, still have
hostelries about which the less said the better. The good
thing, however, is that a great many of the small and
medium-sized towns of the valley have excellent hotels,
places either built within the last decade or restyled and
refurbished in that period. You can go to some towns that
as a whole are unprepossessing in appearance and walk into
your hotel room to find decor in the best modern taste and,
frequently, good housekeeping. You can drive through the
dusty, grimy oil-refinery city of Casper and be pleasantly
surprised by a few modern touches, such as the electric eye
that opens the outer doors of the Gladstone Hotel. You
can also get some other surprises. Take the creaky St.
Charles Hotel at Pierre: place the plug in some of its old
bathtubs, then turn on the faucets, and you will find the
plug dancing on top of a jet of water. The water supply
enters by the orifice that serves as the drain. At a growing
number of basin towns the newer lodges for motorists are
superior to the hotels and, in fact, are reserved by local
reception committees for distinguished visitors. Such a

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 83

<><*£>0<><><><X><>^^

place, for instance, is the air-conditioned Skyline Motel at
Concordia, Kansas.

It is not difficult at all to drive fifty or a few hundred
miles for business or social reasons in nearly all parts of the
basin. People do it all the time. A fifty-mile drive there is
far easier than crossing the Chicago Loop.

The zone line between central time and mountain time,
which cuts down through the center of the Dakotas and
Nebraska and into Kansas, is just about the standard bound-
ary for the silver dollar. Everywhere west of there the trav-
eler and the native alike get their change in cartwheels
ninety-nine times out of a hundred. A few of the pretty,
jingly things can wear out any trouser pocket, but they are
a stubbornly cherished sign of the area, like the mint julep
of Kentucky or the dark eyeglasses of Hollywood. Dollar
bills are to be had only on request; you feel somewhat
suspect if you ask for them. Except for Colorado, this is
not silver country — just a hard-money region.

Rugged, independent, individualistic people like those
in the Missouri basin are bound to have a goodly quota of
strong and colorful "characters." Every section of every
state in the valley has them. A lot of them are leaders, some
are stooges or figureheads, some just bores. Listen to them
and often you may discover hidden reservoirs of wisdom or
talent. Or the pay dirt may be different: tales of the "old
days" and the old ways.

Man's gregariousness naturally has its regional twists.
Nebraska's governors maintain a thriving "Great Navy," all
members of which are Admirals, a rank that many assorted
honorable outlanders have attained. Rapid City, South Da-

84 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

^^^^^^^^^^

kota, conducts with considerable eclat the Black Hills Te-
pee of the Singing Tribe of Wahoo. The Army Engineers
have a mythical organization known as the River Rats, with
various ranks. Businessmen of Yankton, South Dakota,
have set up the Yankton Burrow of the River Rats. Once
the press corps enlivened a dull session by distributing
memberships in the "Permanent Congregation" of those
regularly attending meetings of the Missouri Basin Inter-
agency Committee. The old gag of having the men of a
town grow whiskers in observation of some civic celebra-
tion can be found in the basin. Helena was doing it for a
"pioneer days" affair in 1949, and even the newly sedate
Kansas City did it on a big scale for its centennial in 1950.

Somewhere east of the time-divider and more nearly
corresponding to the twisting boundary between the humid
and the semi-arid zones is the line of demarcation for mas-
culine footwear. West of this line, in a great deal of the
basin, a great many of the men, in places a large majority
of them, wear high-heeled cowboy boots habitually. Young
men working on motor trucks have been observed wearing
them. Fellows around an oil rig in Wyoming may use them,
and so may a lot of other people who are not normally on
horseback. It is a custom and a badge of the country. Many
ranchers and businessmen in the cattle districts also find it
comfortable to go everywhere in well-cut trousers of gabar-
dine or corduroy, with side-slash pockets, of a design suit-
able for the saddle, with matching coats somewhat like the
Eisenhower battle jacket of World War II. Leg-protecting
chaps are seldom needed in this region.

Daylight saving is conspicuous by its absence in the
Missouri basin: wheat, cows, corn, and sheep all run by sun

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 85

<*x£><><><>0<><><£>^^

time. The nearest intrusion is in St. Louis County, Mis-
souri, where daylight saving spills over informally from the
city.

North Dakota for several years was the only state in the
country which had no parking meters in any town. The
farmers did not like them, and the farmers' feelings are
mighty important in that and other basin states. A referen-
dum was submitted a few years ago and the people banned
the contrivances. The legislature permitted their restricted
return in 1951. Incidentally, the time-honored custom of
Saturdays in town for farm families continues strong
throughout this valley. Wyoming, Montana, North Da-
kota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Kansas were among the
seventeen states of the country from which no cities sent
applications for federal slum-clearance aid under the 1949
Housing Act. This is understandable, for, with a few pos-
sible limited exceptions, the cities of these states do not
have slums of the type envisioned by the federal statute.
Kansas City, Missouri, does have bad slums, but it has em-
barked on an ambitious program of broad civic improve-
ments.

All through the war period of the first half of the 1940*8,
and to a considerable extent in the recovery period of the
second half, the Missouri basin enjoyed generally good in-
come. It was blessed with a prolonged cycle of more mois-
ture than usual. There has been no strong indication that a
new dry spell might be approaching, but there has been a
falling off of income in many areas while the national infla-
tionary trend has continued. A reflection of the drop in
income was seen in a summary statement by the Federa-
tion of Tax Administrators after analyzing returns for state

86 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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income taxes for the fiscal year 1950 compared with the
preceding year. The statement, issued through the Public
Administration Clearing House, said:

"Personal income tax collections dropped in at least 12
of the 31 states that impose these levies. The declines,
which ranged from .5 of i per cent in North Carolina to
30.3 per cent in Kansas, largely reflected the sharp, almost
nation-wide drop in farm income during calendar year 1949.
While U.S. Department of Commerce data indicate de-
clines in all categories of income, except governmental pay-
ments, the largest was a 22 per cent drop of farm income.
A decline of 45 per cent in North Dakota's farm income
was accompanied by a decrease of 25.3 per cent in indi-
vidual income tax yields. In Montana, farm income was 44
per cent under 1949 and tax collections declined about
1 1 per cent. Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas and Oregon were
other states in which lower farm income effected significant
reductions in personal income tax collections."

Decline in corporate income taxes was more widespread
than that in personal income taxes, the statement added.
Of eight states in which corporate income taxes declined
by more than 20 per cent in the year's interval, only Mon-
tana, perhaps significantly, was in the Missouri basin.
Montana has some big business, while corporate enterprise
is not strong in most of the basin.

Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan was mak-
ing an impassioned defense of his ill-starred plan for agri-
culture at St. Louis in the spring of 1949. He related that
the nation's average farm income was $609 a year, con-
trasted with an average non-farm income of $1,565. He
went on: "Some people will say: ' You've got a lot of share-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 87

<>O<>0<^<><><£<><><^^

croppers in that 609 figure/ Sure we have, but we also have
Tom Campbell, the big wheat farmer at Great Falls, Mon-
tana, and a lot of other big ones — and there are a lot of
little people in that non-farm group, too."

The farmers of the Missouri basin are a well-organized
bloc. In Missouri the leading organization, claiming far
more members than any other, is the Missouri Farmers'
Association. It operates co-operative marketing and supply
establishments of various sorts and keeps a close hand on
the legislature, which, as in the other basin states, is set up
for rural domination despite the heavy population in sev-
eral of the cities. The Missouri Farmers' Association, or
MFA, is on the whole politically conservative, yet it is one
of the ardent advocates of a Missouri Valley Authority on
the pattern of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In many parts of the basin the Farm Bureau Federation
has strong local units. This is a national organization of
conservative character, usually working closely with the De-
partment of Agriculture, the federally backed state "aggie"
schools, and the county farm agents, who are supported by
the state-federal system.

Elsewhere in the basin, notably in large portions of
Montana, the Dakotas, and Colorado, the National Farm-
ers' Union is strong and active. This is a left-of-center or-
ganization, willing to back unpopular causes and take the
liberal side of public questions. It has a big system of co-ops
and an insurance service. Tall, bluff Jim Patton runs it from
extensive modern offices on the outskirts of Denver, and it
maintains a branch office at Washington, where chubby,
ruddy Ben Stong is an effective publicist. North Dakota has
one of the vigorous state units, with a modern headquarters

88 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<&$>&><><$><><><>^^

building at Jamestown. The NFU strongly favors a Mis-
souri Valley Authority.

The big stockmen, operating on a large scale, have their
own associations, more like trade groups than like a farm-
ers' assembly. The irrigation states have state associations
aligned with the National Reclamation Association. Among
their active backers you are more likely to find the Chamber
of Commerce people, the railroads, other business interests,
and the state or district water officials than the irrigation
farmers themselves, who are busy on their i6o-acre plots of
reclaimed near-desert.

Politically, the Missouri basin is something of a hodge-
podge, but one fact stands out: it is predominantly Re-
publican and conservative. This does not mean that it
spurns New Deal aid or any other federal assistance. On
the contrary, it wants just about all it can get of that, which
means that the wealthier parts of the nation must, in effect,
subsidize this great valley. There is some very good justifi-
cation for this, as manifestly large states existing on an agri-
cultural economy, but with no more population than some
secondary Eastern cities, cannot possibly pay by themselves
for many of the king-size improvements that must be made.
Without federal aid, Wyoming could not build highways
vitally needed by the whole country. Nor could South Da-
kota erect big dams for irrigation and power. Nor could
even relatively rich Missouri pay the huge bill for flood con-
trol.

In the face of this situation, and right in the middle of
the huge program of improvements under the Interagency
plan, requiring annually tremendous appropriations from
Washington, the basin has remained determinedly Repub-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 89

«>O<><><X><X><>0<><><^^

lican as a whole. Missouri and Montana are the only two
basin states with Democratic governors and state adminis-
trations. Missouri long has been pretty generally regarded
as a Democratic state, especially with the growing impor-
tance of that party's vote in its big cities. Montana in this
column is accounted for by a strong labor element, notably
in the copper industry, and a leftish inclination of its farm
people, and perhaps also by a general state of protest against
the vested interests entrenched there. Colorado had a Dem-
ocratic administration, but went Republican in the 1950
election. Wyoming's senators are Democrats through a
long combination of political circumstances, but its lone
congressman is a Republican. Of the 20 senators from the
basin states, 13 are Republicans; the number was 14, but
Missouri made a switch in the 1950 election when the na-
tion's general trend was the other way. Both senators are
Republicans in each of these states: Kansas, Nebraska,
North Dakota, South Dakota. The basin states had 34 Re-
publicans and 17 Democrats in the House in the Eighty-
second Congress, a gain of four Republicans and a corre-
sponding loss of Democrats since the Eighty-first. The
Democratic losses were in Nebraska, Missouri, and Colo-
rado.

Politics is a serious business in these states, but must
seem like a Lilliputian affair to practitioners in more popu-
lous regions. If your state has only half a million or so in-
habitants, including the aged and infirm, children, felons,
and maybe some Indians who have not yet gained the
ballot (some of them do have it), a state-wide vote of 150,-
ooo might be an optimum, 90,000 good. In that case, even
if you were running for the dignified office of senator or

90 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><x^O0<xX><>^

governor, you would go after every little crossroads gather-
ing you could find to pick up a few votes. It is not a bad
idea at that, from the people's standpoint. Some of these
basin politicians must know their states and their people
far better than officeholders in the big commonwealths
know theirs.

Some nice distinctions of party and faction are to be
found in this country. Just by way of illustration, take one
of the most intricate cases: North Dakota. A politician on
the dominant side there sought to explain the situation by
oversimplification recently. He said: "Politics is pretty hard
to follow here, but goes something like this: The Republi-
cans are split into two groups, the conservative wing, or
ROC — that is, Republican Organizing Committee — which
is in control, and the old Nonpartisan League, which ran
the state once upon a time. Then there are the Democrats,
who are the minority. They are split up into left-wingers,
New Dealers, the Farmers' Union, and so on. See?"

In Montana, politics is strongly colored by dark talk of
the behind-the-scenes control and manipulation by the "in-
terests." The common saying is that this or that order,
policy, or political decision emanated from the "sixth floor."
That is usually interpreted to mean the executive offices of
the Montana Power Company in its building at Butte. The
big villain, however, whenever a Montanan wants to fix the
blame for politics, the weather, bad business, or poor fish-
ing, is the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, industrial
behemoth of the state. If things are really bad, the power
company is tacked onto the asserted villainy in the role of
ACM's errand boy. Sometimes critics toss in the state's
three railroads, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern,

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 91

<*X><><><>3><>0<x>e><^^

and the Milwaukee, to make a clean sweep of the "inter-
ests." A great deal has been written about the position of
the interests in Montana, and it is not my intention here to
prosecute or defend the case. It should be noted, neverthe-
less, that without doubt ACM and the power company do
have far-flung activities in Montana, and that the people of
the state have had some persuasive reasons to feel that they
were being selfishly exploited.

Even in such a bitter political atmosphere politics can
have its lighter side. I was in Montana shortly before the
primary election of 1946, when veteran Senator Burton K.
Wheeler was losing the race for renomination on the Dem-
ocratic ticket and doubtless knew it full well. Once a fire-
eater, he had turned conservative. His successful opponent
was Leif Erickson, lawyer, who was sure of the Scandi-
navian vote if of nothing else. Mr. Wheeler was broad-
casting his first main speech from a picnic one Sunday
afternoon. Mr. Erickson stopped his car out in the country
and flung a radio aerial over the barbed-wire fence of an
Indian reservation. His snorts of derision and dissent pre-
vented me from hearing the address. A few days later I rode
down another highway with Senator Wheeler, and the car
radio was tuned in on the Erickson daily talk. Same thing:
the Senator fussed and fumed so much that his rival was
drowned out.

Nebraska gave the country the late Senator Norris, lib-
eral Republican, who was the father of the Tennessee
Valley Authority. Nebraska is the one state in the Union
wholly covered by public electric-power supply districts.
Nebraska has the only unicameral state legislature and a
useful preferential primary for President. All of this pre-

92 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<X^<><><><><>0<><><>^^

sents a political anomaly, for Nebraska today is strong for
the conservative way of basin development. Nevertheless,
Nebraska has a vigorous, outspoken governor in Val Peter-
son. He has been re-elected repeatedly to that office and as
chairman of the Missouri River States Committee, an in-
formal but politically powerful organization representing
the governors of the ten basin states. Mr. Peterson has
openly raised controversial questions in the basin time and
again, when more timid politicians would have remained
silent or requested executive sessions. He has insisted on
and obtained answers, furthermore. Cynics have said he
spoke with an eye cocked to the press table, but there has
been more substance to his actions than that. Awhile back,
people were saying also that he talked like a man running for
President, but later he sounded more like a man with an
eye on a Senate seat in '52. He is a youthful chap who owns,
and used to edit, a country newspaper and who used to be
a university professor and an Army officer in the Pacific in
World War II. Today, as a reserve colonel, he would move
from the Capitol at Lincoln to Offutt Air Base at Omaha
in the event of war and become deputy director of materiel
at headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, which
would deal with offensive atomic warfare.

It is fair to single Governor Peterson out for special
comment because of the position he has occupied in basin
affairs. His predecessors as chairman of the valley governors
were soft-spoken, earnest Sam C. Ford of Montana and un-
assuming, bashful-looking M. Q. Sharpe of South Dakota.
Later and through 1950 Governor Peterson had able col-
laboration from neighboring Republican governors who
served with him on the Missouri Basin Interagency Com-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 93

<>C><><X><>0<£O<>O<><^

mittee. These were his good friends George T. Mickelson
of South Dakota and Fred Aandahl of North Dakota. Mr.
Mickelson has retired voluntarily, while Mr. Aandahl has
gone on to the national House of Representatives. At many
an Interagency session or governors' committee meeting
there has been a snappy triple play: Peterson to Mickelson
to Aandahl, or South Dakota to North Dakota to Nebraska,
or Fred to Val to George. They were friendly rivals in vari-
ous things, notably on the ticklish question of distribution
of the hydroelectric power to be generated by the new
dams; but they worked well together and frequently stirred
things up to good avail while others sat silent.

Just one problem really troubled their way: that of the
official precedence of the governors of the two Dakotas.
Both states were admitted to the Union on November 2,
1889, and it seems that there is no record of whether the
papers were signed first for North Dakota or South Dakota.
This makes protocol decisions tough.

An outstanding member of the national House of Rep-
resentatives is the veteran Clarence Cannon, Missouri
Democrat, chairman of the House Appropriations Com-
mittee and as such a powerful figure. His home district lies
on both sides of the Missouri basin boundary.

Some of the senators from the basin may be singled out
for a variety of reasons. James E. Murray, wealthy liberal
Democrat from Montana, chairman of the Senate Labor
and Public Welfare Committee, has been the leading ad-
vocate of a Missouri Valley Authority. He also was one of
the sponsors of the highly controversial national health bill,
and he has been active in various movements intended to
benefit the common man. Kenneth S. Wherry of Nebraska,

94 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><>0O<£><£>0<><^^^

Republican floor leader of the Senate, has been in the fore-
front of the partisan maneuvering of recent times. Jo-
seph C. O'Mahoney, Wyoming Democrat, has been a
Senator since 1933. As chairman of the Interior and Insular
Affairs Committee he has had the leadership in handling
governmental reorganization proposals advanced by the
Hoover Commission. An important amendment to the law
for the Pick-Sloan plan bears the name of Senator O'Ma-
honey and Eugene D. Millikin, Colorado Republican Sena-
tor. The other Senator from Wyoming, Dr. Lester C.
Hunt, gained favorable attention as a member of the
Kefauver Crime Investigating Committee. Senator Hu-
bert H. Humphrey, Minnesota Democrat, a former mayor
of Minneapolis, is something of a New Deal firebrand.
James P. Kem, Republican, Missouri's senior Senator, is
an arch-conservative from Kansas City.

And then there is Senator William Langer of North
Dakota, labeled and elected as a Republican, but openly
unorthodox and unfettered politically. He started out with
the backing of the Nonpartisan League, and he aided the
presidential campaigns of Robert M. La Follette and Hiram
Johnson. Twice he was elected Governor of North Dakota
and twice Senator, but his political career has been stormy
and seamy. His biography in the Congressional Directory
states, among other things, that he was the "only person
ever to be arrested in any English-speaking country for
filing an affidavit of prejudice against a judge," and that
"his first teacher was Alice Rutledge, a cousin of the sweet-
heart of Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge/' Mr. Langer was
one of the old isolationists, with a record of opposition to
some of the key measures for national defense in the pe-

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 95

<**£><><><><><X*£><X^

riod before Pearl Harbor. He has been largely ineffectual in
the Senate; sometimes he has taken a liberal stand, some-
times the opposite. In 1950 he collapsed on the Senate floor
in a filibuster against the McCarran Communist control
bill. He has inveighed against nepotism, but Robert S.
Allen, the columnist, has asserted that he had family con-
nections on the public payroll. Winston Churchill was bit-
terly attacked by the Senator on the Senate floor in 1949;
Mr. Langer included an assertion that the British statesman
had fought against this country in the Spanish-American
War — a charge that was promptly denied. Mr. Langer par-
ticipated in a 1945 minority report supporting the Murray
bill for a Missouri Valley Authority. On the other hand, a
Senate investigation of notorious Kansas City vote frauds,
sought by Senator Kem, was blocked by Senator Langer as
a member of the Judiciary Committee. He opposed the
Marshall Plan to aid Europe. He introduced a bill to help
Ellen Knauff in the prolonged controversy over her exclu-
sion from the country, but he was unable to get it out of
committee. He cast one of the two votes against American
membership in United Nations. In his two separate terms
as Governor in the 1930*5 he had a hectic time; he was in-
dicted over the handling of public relief, but eventually
won acquittal. His career led to charges of moral turpitude
when he entered the Senate, but after a long delay the Sen-
ate voted to seat him, 52 to 30.

Despite the presence in office of men like Senators
Langer and Kem, abundant evidence developed in the first
five years after World War II that the Missouri Valley no
longer is the stronghold of national isolation which it was
of old. For one thing, it became acutely aware, especially

96 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<X>0<><Xc><>«><><>0<X^^

along its broad northern reaches, of the closeness of Russia
by air via the North Pole. What change in the valley's atti-
tude, if any, will come out of the great debate over foreign
policy and the conduct of the Korean war, aroused by Presi-
dent Truman's removal of General Douglas MacArthur,
only time can tell. Quite possibly the answer may be found
in the election of November 1952.

William M. Blair of the New York Times has had occa-
sion to look into the attitudes of the people of the valley.
In a discussion shortly before the MacArthur ouster he said:

' 'There is concrete evidence that the basin has shed its
shell of isolationism. Many of its farmers have visited Eu-
rope since World War II, and they have returned virtually
as missionaries, in support of the needs of Europe, as the
hope of saving the world. The fact that many of the people
of the valley are only one, or two, or three generations re-
moved from Europe has had something to do with the
change. There are a lot of displaced persons from Europe
in the Missouri basin now, and much of the urge to get
them there came from the Lutherans and Catholics of the
region. Politicians in this area have been finding their
strongest talking points in their campaigns now are on in-
ternational affairs. The results of the 1950 elections were
held by some to have reflected dissatisfaction with the han-
dling of the Korean war — not objection to having gotten
into the war, but displeasure with the way in which the
national administration was prosecuting it."

In a region as agricultural in character as the Missouri
Valley, it is no surprise to find that the number-one do-
mestic question is the farm problem — that old issue which
has been in the national mind for three or four decades.

V. THE VIKINGS AND THE ELIZABETHANS 97

<><><^<^><^><>^^^

This area is vitally concerned in the national policies that
affect its primary livelihood, so its people think and talk
much about the prices, controls, and aids for livestock,
grains, and other crops. Perhaps an explanation of the
willingness of this largely Republican and anti-New Deal,
anti-Fair Deal region to accept federal aid on the grand
scale is traceable to the traditional thriftiness of the farmer.
He is willing to have someone else provide for him — and in
this region he is fully conscious of the vital importance of
his products to the welfare and mayhap the very safety of
the nation and the world.

[ 98 ]

<><x*^e^<><><*^^e^^

CHAPTER VI

The Towns Get Bigger, the Country Smaller

RURAL districts of the Missouri basin have been losing
population steadily for a long time; its more important
urban centers, both large and small, have been gaining.
This is in line with what has been happening generally
throughout the United States, but in the basin the trend
is so sharp as to be alarming. One reason for concern, of
course, is that the region's economy continues to be agri-
cultural while the desired new industrialization has not yet
developed. An obvious finding is that the better and more
desirable centers have grown, but that vast geographical
areas in this valley have been losing their people, becoming
more and more lonely and deserted. Many little towns and
villages are withering. The wide-open spaces are becoming
wider and more open.

There are now in the Missouri Valley, as closely as can
be ascertained, about 7,576,000 inhabitants. This is 5 per
cent of the population of the nation. If the basin were pop-
ulated in proportion to its area, it would have about 25,000,-
ooo people. The basin's population as a whole grew only 3
per cent in the decade between the census of 1940 and that
of 1950; during this decade that of the nation increased 14.4
per cent. Growth of a limited number of centers accounted
for increases that were, in the aggregate, more than twice as

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER 99

<&$>&£>3*><X>4><^^

big as the over-all increase in the basin. In other words, the
rural districts fell off sharply and the basin showed a net
gain only because of its more prosperous towns and cities.

Virtually one third of all the basin's people dwell within
the limits of 52 cities of 10,000 or more each. About one
quarter of them actually live in 16 cities of 30,000 or more.
You can narrow it down ever farther: one fifth of them are
in eight cities of 75,000 or more, while one sixth of them
are confined to the two neighboring Kansas Citys, Denver,
and Omaha. The moral of these mathematical exercises is
again the spreading scarcity of the rural population.

It became possible only recently to make a detailed
analysis of the population when Charles E. Brokaw, De-
partment of Commerce member of the Missouri Basin
Interagency Committee, compiled preliminary 1950 popu-
lation census data by counties. No one had previously tried
to narrow the picture down that far. Mr. Brokaw included
all counties either wholly or partly in the basin and ex-
cluded counties lying beyond the basin boundaries. It
would be impossible to adhere exactly to the actual con-
fines of the valley, for records are not kept that way. It is
true that the Brokaw figures somewhat exaggerate the facts
by including portions of a relatively small number of coun-
ties beyond the exact boundary, but study of the maps and
the background shows that this unavoidable error is small.

Following his rule literally, Mr. Brokaw included in his
list St. Louis County, Missouri, and El Paso County, Colo-
rado, because minor portions of those counties are in the
basin. I have completely eliminated data for these counties
for purposes of this analysis: they would unduly exaggerate
the showing. This, incidentally, constitutes a partial offset

100 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><*£<><£<><>O<><X><X^

for the non-basin portions of other counties that are left in.
St. Louis County is a very populous suburban area of the
city of St. Louis, which city is independent of any county.
The strip of this county inside the Missouri basin, however,
has a relatively small part of the county's population or in-
dustry. Colorado Springs is in El Paso County, but in the
Arkansas River basin, and only a tiny mountainous fringe
of this county is in the Missouri basin.

By states, the population of the basin, compiled as indi-
cated above, is divided as follows:

Missouri 1,752,422

Nebraska 1,318,079

Kansas 1,170,169

Colorado 790,801

Iowa 765,296

South Dakota 650,025

Montana 450,807

North Dakota 344>4°9

Wyoming 245,195

Minnesota 88,924

TOTAL 7,576,127

In comparison, the population figures for this territory,
compiled in the same way for previous decennial counts,
were as follows:

7>354>536

7>463>!35
1920 7,106,686

The net gain for the basin between 1940 and 1950 was
221,591, taking into account increases in eight states and
decreases in two states, as follows:

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER 1O1

&&X>&-X><><$><>&^^

Colorado 1^5,3i5 gain

Wyoming 37,106 gain

Kansas 30,770 gain

Missouri 18,328 gain

Montana 11,294 gain

South Dakota 7>°54 gam

Nebraska 2,245 gain

Minnesota 320 gain

North Dakota !5^33 loss

Iowa 35,008 loss

Against this over-all gain of 221,591 was an aggregate
increase of 487,540 persons in main centers of eight of the
states (all but Iowa and Minnesota). In each of these states
except North Dakota, the gain in the larger towns or cities
was appreciably more than the gain in the entire basin por-
tion of the state. In North Dakota the gain in principal
centers was equivalent to only about one half of the over-all
decrease. Analysis shows that the spots where the increases
occurred, for the aggregate figure of 487,540, were the fol-
lowing towns and cities and their immediate environs:

Denver

Denver suburbs }• Colorado 174,069

Northern piedmont

Cheyenne

Casper

Cody

Riverton

Laramie

Rawlins

Worland

Newcastle

1O2 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

&&<>$><><&<><><><&<><>^

Kansas City
Topeka

Kansas City

Springfield

Columbia

Rolla

St. Charles

Washington

Billings
Great Falls

Sioux Falls
Rapid City
Aberdeen

Omaha
Lincoln

Bismarck

Minot

Riverdale

Kansas
Missouri

Montana
South Dakota
Nebraska

60,872
112,063

24,970

30,586

37>243

North Dakota 7,854

No appreciable offset for the over-all decline in popu-
lation occurred in the Iowa segment of the basin. Sioux
City, noted meat-packing center and the largest city in the
segment, had a gain of only 332 persons, while Council
Bluffs went up by 3,745.

Checking back three decades, to 1920, shortly after
World War I, we find that the basin population has in-
creased by only 469,441 in all that time, or 6.6 per cent.
The increase in the 1940-50 decade alone was almost one
half of this thirty-year change. That is one encouraging ele-
ment for the basin. In the three-decade period three states
showed a drop in population within the basin: Montana,

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER 103

&&$>$><&z><$&>><>><z^^

North Dakota, and Iowa. The basin's net gain of 469,441
in the three decades was divided by states as follows:

Colorado 294,918 gain

Missouri 86,210 gain

Wyoming 84,146 gain

Kansas 31,200 gain

Nebraska 21,707 gain

South Dakota l!>41% ^n

Minnesota 7>13$ ganl

Montana 812 loss

North Dakota 29>497 l°ss

Iowa 39>°47 l°ss

One sixth of the nation's territory had an increase of
less than 470,000 population in almost one third of a cen-
tury! That fact alone cries out for development of the Mis-
souri basin. Why, that gain all over the valley in three
decades hardly exceeds the number of inhabitants of the
largest metropolis, Kansas City! One point of comfort: the
1950 basin population was a new high mark.

It is noticeable that there was a decrease of 108,599
inhabitants in the decade of 1930-40. Actually, there were
gains in six states and losses in four — including three with
sharp drops. The decreases were caused mainly by the suc-
cessive droughts and by the Dust Bowl era on the prairies.
They aggregated 153,915, divided as follows: Nebraska,
62,130; South Dakota, 45,861; North Dakota, 37,561; Iowa,

8,363.

There are 465 counties wholly or partially within the
Missouri basin, in the 10 states. Three quarters of them,
346 counties, lost population between 1940 and 1950; 157
counties lost population consistently throughout the three

104 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><£><><><><^cx^e«x^^

decades, 1920-50. These were divided as follows: Missouri,
40; Nebraska, 33; Kansas, 24; Montana, 19; South Dakota,
14; Iowa, 13; North Dakota, 8; Colorado, 5; Wyoming, i;
Minnesota, o.

On the other hand, only 119 counties in the basin
gained population between 1940 and 1950, and only 52
gained consistently from 1920 to 1950. South Dakota had
the fewest consistent gainers, two counties, while the largest
number to a state was seven each in Colorado, Kansas, and
Wyoming.

Colored on a map, the counties that have been losing
their people show up all over the basin. If any pattern is to
be perceived in such a map, it is roughly this: the gains have
occurred in spotty fashion along the flood plain of the Mis-
souri River proper and in the valleys of the North Platte,
the Yellowstone, and the Kansas and its upstream branches,
and in the piedmont country of Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana. The rises in population seem, at least on a super-
ficial glance, to be connected with concentrations of indus-
try and of the jobbing and distributing trade, and with some
of the more fertile and better-watered land.

The gasoline motor and the Diesel engine have had a
great deal to do with the dwindling rural population of the
Missouri basin, as of other farming areas of the United
States. They have signalized a growing tendency to mecha-
nization of the farm and the ranch in the 1940*8 and par-
ticularly, in some areas of the basin, during the latter years
of that decade. Doubtless the gradual spread of rural elec-
trification constitutes a phase of this mechanization, for
electric power has been a boon on farms reached by its
costly lines. The more a farmer can do with machinery, the

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER 1O5

•<^><>><^>^<^><^^^

less hired help he needs and the less incentive his sons find
to stay on the place. Conversely, the more machinery he
uses, the more land he can handle. So the size of farms
grows and the number of farmsteads — which means peo-
ple— dwindles.

Tractors, combines, other machinery powered by mo-
tors that burn gasoline or low-grade Diesel fuel, and a wide
range of farm equipment powered by electric motors have
put in their appearance all over the basin. The motor en-
ters into the picture also in the long-haul truck that takes
farm products to market or brings food stocks to stores, and
in the family automobile that facilitates trips to better shop-
ping, amusement, and medical centers than farm families
used to be able to reach. The Missouri Valley may not have
many fine highways, but in an arid country the car, truck,
or tractor negotiates some pretty rough trails a great deal of
the time. For proof, watch the dust clouds. Thus mecha-
nization has virtually doomed a great many villages and
small towns. People pass them up for better and brighter
places to visit or live. Some of these smaller places have
persisted primarily as homes for elderly retired farmers.
When these oldsters join the last roundup their frame
dwellings are likely to remain only as ghost towns.

Fortunately, the decline of human population on the
farmlands has not meant that the lands were abandoned.
Agricultural production in the basin has been rising mark-
edly in recent years, and in some districts the acreages in
cultivation have increased. It seems plain that mechaniza-
tion of farming is the explanation of this phenomenon of
fewer people and more crops. Some agricultural experts are
of the opinion that the trend is leveling off. Nevertheless

106 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<£><><><><><^e><><><x><^^

this truism cannot be overlooked: it takes people to make
markets, and it takes markets within convenient reach to
convert a regional agricultural economy into an integrated
economy in which industry fits naturally and uses the es-
tablished or available raw products.

Perhaps three of the basin states call for special expla-
nations. Wyoming, with the smallest over-all population
and one of the largest areas, offers one of the contradictions
of the valley with its 15.1 per cent increase in basin inhab-
itants in 1940-50. To a very considerable extent this is
owing to development of its oil fields. Colorado had a
growth in the basin of 20.9 per cent. This appears to be a
natural development of a district blessed with good land,
a fair supply of water, varied natural resources, a fine
climate, and remarkable scenery. Missouri, with almost one
quarter of the basin's entire population, gained barely i per
cent over-all in the decade. Considering its size and its
climatic, geographic, and economic location, this showing
for Missouri is more striking than that of the other states.
Furthermore, Missouri, with only about half its area within
the basin, had more basin counties consistently losing pop-
ulation in the last three decades than any other state. Mis-
souri is not dry; it is humid, but it has districts where the
land is poor or the vital topsoil has grown dangerously thin,
eroding through the gullies and creeks until it has wasted
away into the big river. Manufacturing and distributing
trades and a pair of college towns, Columbia and Rolla,
were all that kept Missouri from showing a decrease in basin
population.

Special mention might be made also of Montana, where
Billings and Great Falls had growth that offset rural losses.

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER

4>&X>&$>&$>&$^^

Billings, nestled in the benches along the Yellowstone, and
backstopped by some fine valley land that has been locally
irrigated for many years, is a lively, thriving city. It has been
showing some industrial advances, including the recent
opening of an oil refinery. Great Falls is an important manu-
facturing center in ACM's copper empire.

Less than half of the people of the ten states dwell
within the basin limits; somewhat less than 47 per cent, to
be more exact. Aggregate population of the ten states, as
entireties, in the final figures of the 1950 census, is 16,268,-
036. In the case of Nebraska, of course, the proportion
within the basin is precisely 100 per cent, and in South
Dakota it comes close to that, as no county in the latter
state is wholly outside the basin. For the other states, the
percentage of total population that lives in the basin is ap-
proximately as follows: Wyoming, 84; Montana, 76; Kan-
sas, 61; Colorado, 60; North Dakota, 55; Missouri, 44;
Iowa, 29; Minnesota, 3. In most cases, there is no relation-
ship between the proportion of area and the proportion of
population included in the basin; for example, more than
two thirds of the area of Colorado, including most of the
spectacular mountains, lies in the basins of the Colorado
and Arkansas rivers, but three fifths of that state's people
reside in the Missouri basin. Many important Iowa com-
munities are in the upper Mississippi watershed. Wichita is
among the Kansas centers not in the Missouri basin. In
Missouri the majority of 1,250,000 inhabitants of metro-
politan St. Louis are not in this basin, yet in a sense St.
Louis is the real metropolis of the Missouri Valley.

The top sixteen cities of the basin, with preliminary
1950 census figures of their population, are these:

108 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><£<><x><><>e«><><->^^

Kansas City, Missouri 453,290

Denver, Colorado 412,856

Omaha, Nebraska 247,408

Kansas City, Kansas 129,583

Lincoln, Nebraska 97>423

Sioux City, Iowa 84,035

Topeka, Kansas 77$27

St. Joseph, Missouri 75>572

Sioux Falls, South Dakota 52,161

Council Bluffs, Iowa 45, 1 84

Great Falls, Montana 39,006

Independence, Missouri 36,832

Manhattan, Kansas 33>574

Cheyenne, Wyoming 31,807

Columbia, Missouri 31>731

Billings, Montana 31»725

TOTAL 1,880,014

The two Kansas Citys are essentially one community,
with a largely invisible and forgotten state line dotted
through the heart. A great many persons who dwell on the
Kansas side work on the Missouri side, and there is a cer-
tain amount of the reverse. Likewise, Independence, home
of President Truman, is essentially a residential and com-
mercial suburb of greater Kansas City. Council Bluffs and
Omaha are in the same metropolitan district. Lincoln is an
up-and-coming place, having grown about 19 per cent in the
last decade; it is tending to become industrialized. Man-
hattan is a college town, fairly near a large established Army
post. Cheyenne, the capital city, has benefited from oil,
commerce, and transportation.

Basin cities in the next lower bracket ( 30,000 to 1 5,000
population) are as follows:

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER

<><><><><£><><xX><>^^

Salina, Kansas 26,141

Rapid City, South Dakota 25>T79

Jefferson City, Missouri 24,990

Casper, Wyoming 2 3,557

Lawrence, Kansas 23,292

Grand Island, Nebraska 22,835

Aberdeen, South Dakota 20,976

Leavenworth, Kansas 2O>543

Greeley, Colorado 20,286

Sedalia, Missouri 20,269

Hastings, Nebraska 20,108

Boulder, Colorado 19,916

Bismarck, North Dakota 18>544

Helena, Montana 17*498

Englewood, Colorado 16,619

Laramie, Wyoming 15>497

North Platte, Nebraska ^5^9°

Englewood is a suburb of Denver.
The next classification consists of the cities of 1 5,000 to
10,000 population:

Fort Collins, Colorado M>932

Fremont, Nebraska M'^39

St. Charles, Missouri 14^3°7

Junction City, Kansas 13>37°

Scottsbluff, Nebraska 12^33

Atchison, Kansas 12>759

Huron, South Dakota 12»713

Watertown, South Dakota 12,662

Kearney, Nebraska 12,106

Mitchell, South Dakota 12,062

Beatrice, Nebraska 11,788

Sheridan, Wyoming 11,402

Aurora, Colorado 11,396

110 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<&<><><X><>$><Z><><$>^^

Bozeman, Montana 11,252

Norfolk, Nebraska 11,231

Jamestown, North Dakota 10,601

Ottawa, Kansas 10,051

Fulton, Missouri 10,040

Fort Scott, Kansas 9>992

St. Charles is part of the St. Louis metropolitan dis-
trict. Aurora is another Denver suburb. Fulton, nestled
among Missouri prairie farms, was the scene of Winston
Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech.

The foregoing lists include the fifty-two largest cities of
the basin, with combined population of 2,461,790. Forty-
eight of them gained population between 1940 and 1950.
Those which lost population are St. Joseph and Sedalia,
Missouri, and Ottawa and Fort Scott, Kansas. The largest
loss was 565 at Fort Scott, which declined barely below the
10,000 bracket. Eight of the states are represented in the
list of the top sixteen cities. The largest city of North Da-
kota within the basin is Bismarck, near the bottom of the
second bracket. The basin corner of Minnesota has only
small towns.

Two new little cities popped up on the plains in time
for the last census: Riverdale, North Dakota, with 2,551
inhabitants, and Pickstown, South Dakota, with 2,204.
They were built "a long way from nowhere" by the Army
Engineers as construction towns for two of the big new
river projects. Riverdale serves Garrison Dam; Pickstown,
named for General Pick, is at Fort Randall Dam. When
the dams are completed, a few years hence, many of these
people will leave, but a town will always remain at each
place for the supervisory and operating personnel. The

y. The uncontrolled Missouri near Vermillion, South Dakota.
Sandbars are becoming islands as the channel shifts.

Paul Berg, St. Louis Post-Dispatch PICTURES.

8. The Missouri under control at Hermann, Missouri. Here the
channel is being trained by dikes into long, gentle curves.

Paul Berg, St. Louis Post-Dispatch PICTURES.

VI. TOWNS GET BIGGER, THE COUNTRY SMALLER 111

<><>O<*c>C>O<><>OO^^

permanent sections are well-designed or "model" towns.

Kansas City and Denver have a lively, aggressive man-
ner. They do not have the boredom of the old Eastern
cities, but still act as if they were going to go a lot more
places yet — and they probably will. After all, they are
young; Kansas City has just celebrated its one hundredth
anniversary; Denver, the first permanent white settlement
in Colorado, will not have its centennial until 1958. Den-
ver, mile-high on the plains, is noteworthy as a community
chiefly of small, modest, detached or single-family houses,
even for many of its more substantial citizens. Kansas City,
spread over a series of hills, is a showier place, where both
evil and good have been done on the grand scale. Its cur-
rent program of public improvements is a bold one, includ-
ing the cutting of swaths through slums to make modern
expressways for traffic. Not long ago Kansas City decided to
enlarge its boundaries, wholesale fashion, so it reached
straight across the Missouri River to the north and an-
nexed 20 square miles of the next county. Now Kansas City
covers 82 square miles, being one third larger than its rival,
St. Louis, which, however, still has almost twice as many
people.

Kansas City thus has plenty of room to grow in. So, too,
have nearly all the towns and cities of the Missouri basin.
They have only to spread out over the prairies and plains
or up onto the next series of benches. This fact points up
one of the most dominant impressions of many of these
urban communities of the great valley — their roominess.
Their streets were not laid out by wandering cows, nor
platted by dollar-hungry subdividers. They are wide and
straight and inviting, a planner's dream. But it is a long

112 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><>0<><X><><xX>^^

way between towns — a long, empty way in many sections.
Take out those fifty-two larger cities and towns, and you
will have left an average of less than ten persons per square
mile for the entire basin. If you want to feel really lonely,
take away the four larger towns of Wyoming and there will
remain in that state just about two persons per square mile,
scattered over a wild, rugged terrain bigger than Pennsyl-
vania and New York combined.

[ 1*3 ]

<><><><^<^<><><><^e*>o^

CHAPTER VII

As to "Indians Not Taxed"

SEVENTY thousand of the people in the Missouri River
watershed are Indians. They live on twenty reservations.
To a lamentable extent they are a dependent race, not
wealthy like their cousins in oil-rich Oklahoma. Descend-
ants of tribes that once ruled the Great Plains and held the
white man at bay, they are relegated to getting along as
virtual dependents of the federal government. As a rule,
they are not farmers, but they have shown aptitude for
raising livestock on their grazing lands. Some of them are
glad to lease their holdings to white grazers and to live on
the rent. Their simple dwellings are congregated chiefly in
the bottomlands of the rivers, where the soil is better for
their gardens and crops and where there is some shelter.
These valley dwelling-places have become endeared to
them, not only as home, but also as the burying-grounds
of their forebears. Now a great many of these Indians are
confronted with the necessity of moving, and perhaps of
altering their whole way of life, because their homes are on
the sites of a number of the big reservoirs to be filled with
impounded water when the great new dams are built.

Indians were living in the forests of the eastern part of
the Missouri basin and along some of the streams in the
plains in the time of Columbus. They were hunters, but
some of them in the Dakotas planted corn, squash, and

114 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<*x*cXX>0<*X>O^^

beans. Pressure of the white man in his developing New
World, plus the lure of fresh hunting-grounds, moved tribe
after tribe into this vast, pristine valley from the east, west,
and north. The bison, or American buffalo, was the great
game animal. It furnished food, robes, and the material for
tepees and storage boxes. It made nomads of the Indians,
who followed the bison herds.

The general occupation of the Missouri basin by the
numerous Indian tribes is of relatively recent origin, for
many of the tribes moved onto the plains only about three
hundred years ago. Indeed, as has been noted in a historical
account by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs: "When
the white men first traveled up the Missouri River and met
the Indians, the Indians were still finding better ways of
living with Mother Nature in their new home." At that
point in time the Indians of this region became a problem
for the white men and the federal government — a bitter,
puzzling problem that is still with us. For almost one hun-
dred years the nation has segregated most of these Indians
on reservations, in a world apart. This has been a costly and
highly unsatisfactory solution. The reservations have valu-
able potential mineral resources that need development;
meanwhile the income of the Indians is precarious, and
they have not learned self-reliance. It is possible that the
projects for dams and reservoirs may be of real service in
forcing a long step toward assimilation of the Indians into
normal society.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, or Indian Service, an
agency of the Department of the Interior, has been shap-
ing its efforts of late toward making the Indian independ-
ent. It wants to help him to stand on his own feet and to

VII. AS TO INDIANS NOT TAXED 115

<£>&X><X><$><>><>><^^

end what amounts to governmental guardianship. Officials
are of the opinion that they may be aided in this by the
effect of the relocations and readjustments necessitated by
the vacating of the reservoir sites. They are hopeful also
that any increase of industrialization in the region would
give new work opportunities to Indians. Apparently they
will be satisfied if the next generation reflects a good start
in the readjustment process.

Dealings with the Indian tribes have continued to be
through the "agencies" set up on the reservations, them-
selves self-contained or segregated rural communities. Such
a system is hardly in keeping with modern democratic
views. It represents what someone has called "barnacles of
outmoded habits." The Fort Berthold Indian Agency at
Elbowoods, North Dakota, will be flooded out by Garrison
Dam; the central agency at Cheyenne River Reservation,
in South Dakota, will be inundated by Oahe Dam. Fort
Randall and Big Bend dams, on the Missouri in South
Dakota, and eight reservoir and irrigation projects of the
Bureau of Reclamation also will affect Indian lands and
lives. Of these, the Fort Randall work is actively under
way, and one big undertaking of the bureau, Boysen Dam,
on the Big Horn River in Wyoming, is nearing comple-
tion. About seven hundred Indian families, or several thou-
sand persons, must be moved away from the sites. Federal
officials fear that these families will seek to resettle on other
reservation lands already overpopulated. The officials, how-
ever, regard this enforced removal from the reservoir areas
as a challenging opportunity to make a fresh start with a
large group of Indians. How well the challenge will be met
remains to be determined.

Il6 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><XX><><><><X><^

Another basic aspect of the complex Indian problem
concerns the utilization of irrigation water on Indian reser-
vation lands. Can the Indians as a group become good irri-
gation farmers and handle the water properly? They have
had relatively little experience with irrigation farming, a
painstaking specialty. It requires constant effort and plan-
ning by the farmer and the use of efficient methods. All
this is contrary to the experience and inclination of the
Indians. As a whole, they have not been good farmers, wet
or dry. In the Dakotas, where the greater part of the Indian
lands are located, they have had virtually no experience
with irrigation. By the time the Pick-Sloan plan was
adopted, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had developed irri-
gation for 187,000 acres, or a small fraction of the Indian
lands in the basin, and had proposals pending for irrigating
193,000 additional acres. The Pick-Sloan program proposed
to irrigate 216,000 acres of Indian land, largely including
districts where the bureau had made its plans.

The relocation problem first arose about 1945, when
plans for Garrison Dam were initiated. Repeated powwows
took place between the Fort Berthold Tribal Council and
representatives of the Army Engineers and the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. Sometimes, however, when the white offi-
cials wanted to talk, the Indians did not, and absented
themselves. General Pick himself journeyed by car to El-
bowoods and engaged in negotiations, accompanied by
sundry subordinate officers and civilian aids. On other oc-
casions colonels or lieutenant colonels made the dusty trip.
The Indian representatives composing the Tribal Council
usually appeared in full feathered and beaded regalia. The
discussion sometimes was carried on in the Indian tongues

vii. AS TO "INDIANS NOT TAXED" 117

<><><><><x^><Xc><><>^^

on one side of the table and in English on the other, a time-
killing device, for it required tedious interpretations. The
negotiations did not stop at that level. The Indians re-
tained a smart lawyer at Washington. They aroused sup-
port from powerful political quarters. Senator O'Mahoney
of Wyoming at one time championed them in support of
certain legislation on the relocation question. The Inter-
agency committee urged officially that a solution be found.
Congress required at first, and for some time, that the De-
partment of the Interior find and provide lands of equal
quantity and quality to replace those in the Garrison Reser-
voir site. That proved to be a virtually impossible assign-
ment. Eventually, in the autumn of 1949, Congress passed
an appropriation exceeding $12,000,000 for outright cash
reimbursement of the Indians. This solved the immediate
problem of building the reservoir.

In the course of the congressional developments Gov-
ernor Aandahl of North Dakota appeared before a House
subcommittee to argue for funds for Garrison Dam work
and for paying the Indians in cash. His testimony disclosed
the extent to which Indian lands of the Fort Berthold Res-
ervation were leased to white operators. He listed the rela-
tive acreages as follows:

USE INDIANS WHITES

Cropland 2,696

Hay fields 19,080

Grazing land 215,834 282,655

TOTALS 237,610 342,248

In contrast with the foregoing figures, about 160,000
acres of reservation land were needed for the reservoir. The
Governor pointed out that this amounted to less than one

Il8 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><>0<>0<><><><><><><><^^

half of the acreage leased to white operators. He added: "It
is true that the bottomland to be inundated is the timber
land, the better hay land, and the pleasant area in which
the Indians like to dwell. The reservoir, however, will offer
advantages in sport and recreation and economic value that
do not now exist."

Among the desirable features of the river bottoms as
homes for the Indians, at Garrison and elsewhere, are the
availability of timber for home-building and for fuel and
fence posts; easy access to water supplies; handiness to fish
and wildlife whose natural habitat is in the lowlands; and
the presence of wild fruit.

On Fort Berthold Reservation there have been about
1,800 Indians, comprising what is known as the Three
Affiliated Tribes. These are the Gros Ventre, a group re-
puted to have shown great leadership in the Indian-warfare
days; the Arikara, sometimes locally called the Rees; and
the Mandan, perhaps the most agriculturally inclined of the
three tribes. This reservation, somewhat less than average
size, covers 643,368 acres. The Indians own some of this
land outright, some is known as tribal land, and some is
allotted in trust.

The Sioux, concentrated largely in South Dakota, are
the most numerous of the tribes. About one fifth of the
area of South Dakota is devoted to Sioux reservations,
whose aggregate area is somewhat larger than that of Massa-
chusetts and New Jersey combined.

The area of Indian lands in six states of the basin,
amounting to somewhat more than 21,700,000 acres, or
almost 34,000 square miles, slightly exceeds the area of
Maine. In round figures, it is divided thus:

VII. AS TO INDIANS NOT TAXED
<X*M><M><M><&$><2><^^

STATE

South Dakota

Montana

Wyoming

North Dakota

Nebraska

Kansas

ACRES

10,500,000

7,164,000

2,268,000

1,226,000

583,000

1,000

The reservations and institutions, and the tribes, are
divided by states as follows:

RESERVATIONS

South Dakota
Cheyenne River
Lower Brule
Crow Creek
Yankton
Pine Ridge
Rosebud
Standing Rock
Flandreau School
Sioux Sanitarium
Pierre School

Montana
Blackfeet

Rocky Boys
Fort Belknap
Fort Peck

TRIBES

Sioux

Crow
Tongue River

Wind River

Wyoming

Blackfeet
fChippewa
\Cree
fAssinboine
"JGros Ventre
rSioux
^Assinboine

Crow

Cheyenne

rArapaho
^Shoshone

12O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><X><><><><^£><><^^

North Dakota

Fort Berthold

Fort Totten
Standing Rock

Ponca
Santee
Winnebago
Omaha

Haskell Institute

Nebraska

fGros Ventre
J Arikara
[Mandan

Sioux

Sioux

Ponca
Sioux

Winnebago
Omaha

Kansas

You can travel about the Indian districts a good deal
without seeing much of the Indians. They keep to them-
selves. When seen in the towns on shopping expeditions,
some of them present a rather pitiful appearance: stolid,
dispirited, poorly attired, and occasionally sick-looking folk.
Of course that is not the universal status of these people,
but it is undeniably a valid external impression.

To many persons, perhaps the most familiar Indians of
the region are the Blackfeet. For years a band of handsome
Blackfeet, wearing strikingly rich buckskin costumes with
traditional embellishment, has met the trains and enter-
tained hotel guests at Glacier National Park, in Montana.
Many of their strong faces have been depicted in color on
the calendars of the Great Northern Railway. Travelers on
the Northern Pacific also have often been greeted by a
group of Mandans performing dances on the station plat-
form at Mandan, North Dakota.

It is interesting to note that the United States Consti-
tution mentions Indians in two places. The clause covering

vii. AS TO "INDIANS NOT TAXED" 121

<^<^<><^->^<;^^

enumeration of the people for purposes of dividing mem-
bership of the House of Representatives among the states
excludes "Indians not taxed." This has a bearing, ad-
mittedly minor, on the count for some of the Missouri
basin states. The "commerce clause" of the Constitution
states in a few words one of the most important powers of
the federal government: "To regulate commerce with for-
eign nations and among the several states and with the In-
dian tribes." The last point has been a major source of
federal power over Indians. Under this and other authority
the Bureau of Indian Affairs has a big job cut out for it: to
meet the challenge of assimilating the descendants of the
valley's first historic residents. If the task is handled suc-
cessfully, the result might go down in history as a remark-
able development in mass sociology and practical human
relations.

<$&2>&$*>&&>>&$><£^^

CHAPTER VIII

Radio Challenges the Fourth Estate

AN IMPORTANT factor in the progress and welfare of any
region is the caliber of its daily press. For the Missouri
basin as a whole the newspapers are not strong. Fortunately,
they are generally free of improper outside pressures and
influences. In most of the cities, however, the papers do not
have enough circulation or enough advertising revenue to
do a first-rate job of giving the news of the world, of the
nation, or even sometimes of their own states or neighbor-
hoods. This can be said of the press in various other sec-
tions of the country, but the condition is aggravated in the
Missouri Valley by the relatively slim population in the
spheres of urban influence and, between cities, the yawning
spaces where few papers are sold.

Meanwhile a newer means of communication, the radio,
appears to thrive in this region. It reaches where the press
cannot. The newest means, television, plays a very small
part here so far.

Opinions of a great many residents of the valley clearly
are influenced by what they hear on the radio. For those
who read the papers, the syndicated columnists doubtless
play a part in shaping opinions. Few of the papers have
strong editorial pages capable of waging vigorous fights,
and few of them engage in persistent campaigns in their
news columns to right wrongs of any great importance.

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 123

<**XX><><X*c><X£^^

In the 52 basin cities of 10,000 population or more,
there are 66 daily newspapers, morning or evening, and 30
Sunday papers. The circulation of the daily newspapers as
shown by a standard reference guide is about 2,184,000. On
its face, the figure seems good, the population of these
cities being about 2,461,700; but several of the more impor-
tant papers included have large rural distribution, so that
the number of readers in many other urban communities
would seem to be unusually small.

What is more surprising is that the Sunday circulation
is reported in the same guide as only about 1,657,000.
America's cities elsewhere are accustomed to fat Sunday
newspapers, full of solid information and of entertainment,
which usually represent by far the largest circulation of the
week. In this region the Sunday additive often consists of
nothing more substantial than some "comic" strips, light
magazine features, and local society reports. An editor from
Minneapolis, 180 miles away from the basin, is authority
for the statement that the biggest Sunday-paper circulation
in North Dakota or South Dakota is that of the Minneap-
olis Sunday Tribune, one of the organs of the Cowles fam-
ily. The Tribune has a regional interest in those states, but
its point of view cannot be expected to be the desirable one
of a home-town champion and informer for little basin
cities.

One of the bad elements of the situation is that only
seven cities in the whole basin have an opposition press.
These are Denver; Great Falls, Montana; Independence,
Missouri; Columbia, Missouri; Casper, Wyoming; St.
Charles, Missouri; and Beatrice, Nebraska. The opposition
papers in Great Falls, Independence, and Casper have

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small circulation, and the one in Casper is a tabloid. Co-
lumbia's "second" paper is published by the state univer-
sity's journalism school for general public reading as well
as for the campus. The papers in St. Charles and Independ-
ence have to compete with big city journals.

The only cities of the region with newspapers of full
metropolitan caliber are Kansas City, Denver, and Omaha.

Kansas City has the Star and its morning edition, the
Times. These are sold to subscribers as a package, with
combined circulation, according to a reference guide, of
about 711,000. When people say "the K. C. Star" they
commonly mean to include the Times, as publication really
is an around-the-clock operation. The morning and evening
editions are staffed separately, but a reporter on an out-of-
town assignment for the Star is expected to file dispatches
for the Times also. The usual policy is to carry a news arti-
cle in either the morning or the evening edition, but not
both, unless there is a new development. The theory of
this is that many readers see both papers and do not care
for repetition. The Star does a good job of going after a
story when it wants to, and it keeps the city well informed
on local and state governmental proceedings, but it cannot
be classed as a crusader. Its editorial policies are conserva-
tive and Republican, and its news pages reflect this con-
servatism. Its headlines and make-up, particularly on page
one, have a heavy, old-fashioned touch. On page three,
where some papers display interesting news of secondary
importance, the Star may place a syndicated column or an
article reprinted from a periodical, along with a large space
devoted to advertising. The Star is owned by some of its
employees. The boss is Roy Roberts, who was the paper's

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 125

<><^><><i><^><^<^^

able Washington correspondent three decades ago and
later its managing editor. He has a special interest in poli-
tics. In his regime the paper has paid particular attention
to Kansas, where it has considerable influence and circula-
tion, and where the usual Republican victories must be
pleasing to Mr. Roberts. Missouri's administration has
been Democratic for a long time, but the Star's political
reporters follow affairs of the whole state with unusual
fidelity. Since the end of the vicious control of Kansas City
and Jackson County by the machine of the late Boss Tom
Pendergast, Kansas City has enjoyed a nonpartisan city
government of reform character with some Republican
tinge. The Star has shown diligence on occasion in exposing
local vote frauds. The rotund Mr. Roberts has become a
political oracle, customarily visited by roving correspond-
ents who wish to feel the pulse of the Missouri-Kansas
section.

The Denver Post is one of the nation's gaudiest and
most sensational newspapers. It claims pre-eminence and
a special interest in its "Rocky Mountain Empire," which,
by its definition, takes in a large part of the Missouri basin
and a big slice south thereof. For many years it was owned
by the colorful Frederick G. Bonfils and Harry H. Tammen.
It is still controlled by the former's daughter, Helen Bon-
fils. While it has toned down from its lusty old days, it
remains an excitable and exciting sheet, a melange of bi-
zarre headlines. In recent years it has been under the man-
agement of Palmer Hoyt, who came out of the Northwest.
He put some new life into both the business side and the
journalistic content. One advance attributed to him by
newspaper men is in the direction of greater fairness and

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objectivity in reporting news, including specifically greater
fairness in political news. There never is any doubt about
what the Post is for — or against. It has devoted considerable
attention to the Communists, for instance; it is against
them. The Post is an evening paper, with a big, entertaining
Sunday morning edition that is scattered to the corners of
the paper's "empire." The other Denver paper, a morning
tabloid, is the RocJcy Mountain News, a unit of the Scripps-
Howard chain, with the same impersonal editorial tone
found in the rest of that chain from New York to San Fran-
cisco, but with a distinctive local flavor. It gives the Post ag-
gressive competition. The listed week-day circulations are
222,000 for the Post, 123,000 for the News.

Omaha has the World-Herald, published by Henry
Doorly, with circulation reported as 239,000. This paper
has both morning and evening editions. A reader from
another city often is surprised to find that the language of
many articles in both editions is identical, for the staff fre-
quently does not trouble to find or write either a new "lead"
or a revised article. This practice is the direct opposite of
that of Kansas City's morning and evening papers. The
World-Herald is highly conservative in editorial policy, and
ranges from suspicious to critical of anything it feels to
smack of socialism or the New Deal. It treats all of Ne-
braska as its field of news and often sends staff reporters
across the state on assignment. Soil conservation has been
a matter of special concern to this paper, as a result of the
important agricultural surroundings of Omaha. It has won
several awards for vigorous support of soil conservation.

The World-Herald has had a changing character over
the years. In its early days it was regarded as an agrarian-

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 12J

&$>&&&$><&>>$><^^

radical journal. Then it became a liberal Democratic organ
when published by Senator Gilbert M. Hitchcock, floor
leader of the League of Nations fight for President Wilson.
William Jennings Bryan was attending the Democratic
national convention of 1896 as a reporter for the World-
Herald when he abandoned his journalistic position and
made the famous "Cross of Gold" speech that won him
the presidential nomination. Mr. Doorly, born in the
Bahamas of English parentage, went to Omaha as a youth
and started on the paper with an undistinguished job in
the business office. He rose to the post of business manager,
married the daughter of the boss, Miss Margaret Hitch-
cock, and eventually became head of the paper. In 1932 the
World-Herald supported Franklin D. Roosevelt for Presi-
dent; Senator Hitchcock died in 1934; in 1936 the paper
was for Alf Landon, Kansas Republican, for President, and
it has been conservative Republican ever since. When the
issue of public electric power became sharp in Nebraska,
now the nation's only all-public-power state, the World-
Herald seemed to vacillate for a time, but finally came out
in favor of the public system. The paper is inclined to pick
a "safe" or non-controversial issue, such as scrap collection,
when it chooses to make a campaign.

At Lincoln, Nebraska's capital, the Nebraska State
Journal (morning and evening) and the Lincoln Star
(evening), and their Sunday combination, the Journal-
Star, are under a single corporate ownership. The Journal
and the Star are edited separately, however. The Journal and
its youthful editor, Raymond A. McConnell, Jr. won the Pu-
litzer Prize for distinctive and meritorious journalistic serv-
ice in 1948. This was for forcing all conceivable potential

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candidates for the Presidency onto Nebraska's unique
preferential primary ballot, with the result that the serious
contenders were forced to present themselves in person to
the voters of Nebraska. In 1951 the law was changed, how-
ever, to permit voting only on presidential candidates who
consent to this in writing. Some newspaper men say that
Burt James, then the statehouse reporter for the Journal
and now the managing editor of another Nebraska paper,
the Hastings Tribune, also had an important part in mak-
ing the preferential primary a success. The Journal took on
new life in recent years under Mr. McConnelFs editor-
ship. The editor of the Star, James E. Lawrence, also is an
able newspaper man, with a long record as a liberal. He
was a political lieutenant of the late Senator Norris.

The Mitchell Daily Republic is worthy of notice as a
lively small paper in a small city. Published in a South Da-
kota town of only about 12,000 population, it has the re-
markable circulation of about 16,000, for it is distributed
intensively in the surrounding countryside. It has taken an
openly critical stand on some aspects of the Interagency
plan of basin development, and looked with favor on for-
mation of a new group of conservationists who have ques-
tioned some Interagency ideas. Moreover, it has done
something few other papers in the whole country have
undertaken to do: it has attacked, with rather good under-
standing of the complicated factors involved, the rising
service rates of the Bell telephone system.

In Montana the Great Falls Tribune, with circulation
of about 29,000, is the outstanding paper. Its publisher,
until his recent death, was the elderly, dignified O. S.
Warden, an Associated Press director, Democratic na-

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 129

4><><><$><><$>&$><&&^^

tional committeeman, and reclamation leader. The Tribune
is rather thorough in giving the news of Montana, carrying
many news items that do not find their way into other
papers of the state. Clearly it is independent, but it does
not pack any great wallop. The other paper, the Great Falls
Leader, has circulation of only about 6,200.

The charge, or complaint, often has been made that
some of the other principal daily papers of Montana are
controlled by the state's big industry, Anaconda Copper
Mining Company. Usually the assertion has been uttered
without offer of proof. I wrote to C. F. Kelley, chairman of
the board of ACM, asking for the facts. The reply, confirm-
ing the charge, came to me from Roy H. Glover, of Butte,
Montana, Western general counsel for ACM and president
of the Fairmont Corporation, whose stock, except for di-
rectors' qualifying shares, is owned by ACM. The Fairmont
Corporation, Mr. Glover stated, "owns either the majority
or all of the stock of companies publishing certain daily
newspapers in Montana." He listed these papers as follows:

BILLINGS: the Billings Gazette (morning and afternoon).
HELENA: the Independent Record (afternoon).
LIVINGSTON: the Livingston Enterprise (morning).
BUTTE: fthe Montana Standard (morning),
"(the Butte Daily Post (afternoon).
MISSOULA: fthe Missoulian (morning),
l^the Sentinel (afternoon).

Billings, Helena (the capital), and Livingston are in
the Missouri basin; Butte and Missoula are in the Colum-
bia basin. These five cities and their suburbs have at least
one fifth of the population of all Montana. Butte, Billings,
and Missoula are the largest cities in the state except for

13O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<>0<»<£><><><>0<*^^

Great Falls. Here is the spectacle of one great industrial cor-
poration, with a big economic stake in the commonwealth,
holding ownership of major channels of public information
and opinion. Both the temptation and the moral inherent in
this situation seem obvious. The case was stated recently
by a Helena liberal weekly, the People's Voice: "Except
for the two Great Falls papers, the ACM company owns
all the major daily papers of Montana and can publish or
suppress the facts, as it pleases, which are of concern to
the citizens of the state. It enjoys economic power over the
wellsprings of public opinion." I have heard politicians
complain that only candidates or causes acceptable to ACM
can get into the news columns of these "company papers."
I have heard liberals complain that only the conservative
or "big business" side of public issues can command notice
in these publications. Occasional inspection of these papers
tends to confirm these complaints; they smack of a kept
press.

St. Louis, just outside the Missouri basin, was blessed
until June 15, 1951 with three strong, independent news-
papers, the morning Globe-Democrat, the afternoon Star-
Times, and the afternoon and Sunday-morning Post-Dis-
patch. Rising costs of publication proved too much for the
Star-Times, which ceased publishing and sold its assets to
the Post-Dispatch. The Star-Times had been a relatively
enterprising and liberal journal. Like the Globe-Democrat,
it had been unusually good as compared with the dailies of
many American cities. The fearless, crusading, liberal, and
highly successful Post-Dispatch, where I have worked for
over 33 years, has enjoyed frequent acclaim as one of
the great journals of the nation and the world. By a news

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE

<*X^><><><>C><X><><£^^

and editorial crusade in the early 1940*8 the Post-Dispatch
played a large part in bringing action on the Missouri River
development to a head. It has failed so far, however, to
gain its leading objective of the crusade: establishment of
a Missouri Valley Authority, or MVA. Meanwhile, it has
continued to be the most articulate and vigorous propo-
nent of that cause, printing many more news and analyti-
cal articles about the river and the basin than any other
publication. It was founded by Joseph Pulitzer, Sr., who
later published the old New York World. His son and
namesake has been the active editor and publisher of the
Post-Dispatch for many years. A third Joseph Pulitzer,
grandson of the founder, is vice-president of the corpora-
tion. The Star-Times editorially espoused an MVA also, but
in somewhat half-hearted fashion. It largely ignored the basin
in its news columns. The conservative Globe-Democrat is
bitterly against MVA and pro-Pick-Sloan on its editorial
page, but has paid limited attention to the basin in its news
columns. Circulation of the St. Louis papers within the
basin is confined to eastern Missouri.

Also published outside the valley, but with strong in-
fluence in its Iowa portion, are the Des Moines Regis-
ter (morning) and Tribune (evening), which are Cowles
papers. They have paid relatively little attention to the
basin-development program, even when Iowa's Governor
has journeyed from Des Moines to participate in river
meetings.

The basin-development program, and the controversies
inevitably attached to it, are the biggest news story in the
region, a story that has been taking shape since the early
iQ4o's and will continue for many years. Coverage of this

132 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<^><><^><^<><^>^^

story is one test of the press. The Kansas City Star has been
consistent in spot coverage, with a staff man nearly always
present for key meetings and events. It is not inclined,
however, to challenge or look behind official actions or to
dig into the significance of moves and events. The Denver
Post has rarely covered the basin meetings, and when it
has, the result has usually been superficial. The Rocky
Mountain News has been even less interested. The Omaha
World-Herald has covered most river affairs with staff men
and has gone after some stories on its own. Missouri River
headquarters of the Army Engineers are in Omaha, and
this paper is on the most friendly terms with the Engineers.
Both the World-Herald and the Kansas City Star are
strongly in favor, editorially, of the existing Interagency
plan and administration, and opposed to an MVA. A small
but loud editorial voice joining them, especially in the early
stages of Pick-Sloan, has been that of W. F. Flinn, pub-
lisher of Montana's Miles City Star.

It is ironic that the most intensive news coverage and
analysis of basin development have come from two papers
beyond the basin: the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New
York Times. The former has been the more active, while
the Times has supplied extensive and penetrating reports
from William Blair, its regional staff correspondent sta-
tioned at St. Louis. Occasionally such outside papers as the
Minneapolis Star and the New York Herald Tribune, and
various weekly or monthly magazines, have undertaken to
cover the story of the basin by sending a writer out on a
hasty survey. Fortune did a rather intensive study, sending
Robert Shaplen and a research assistant. Even a skilled re-
porter, however, simply cannot grasp the whole picture in

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 133

<>C>0<><X><><^><><£>^^

one trip; it is too big and complicated. The Associated
Press tried the same thing, under pressure from editors of
AP-served papers, but the main result was a typical one-
shot "roundup" story. The AP does send its South Dakota
bureau chief, Harold S. Milner, to Interagency meetings
for South Dakota "angles" as a result of demands from edi-
tors. The AP and its rival, the United Press, generally cover
river meetings by local staff men, who unfortunately cannot
be expected to be well versed in the intricacies and nuances
of the complex program. The Hearst International News
Service has shown virtually no interest in the basin.

From time to time, editors or publishers of papers of
some of the smaller cities of the basin have attended Inter-
agency metings. Among such men who have shown sincere
understanding of basin affairs are Robert B. Hippie of the
Pierre Capital Journal, John O. Hjelle of the Bismarck
Tribune, Mr. Lawrence and Mr. McConnell of the Lincoln
papers, W. Harrison Brewer of the Casper Tribune-Herald,
E. M. Brady of the Mitchell Daily Republic, and Fred C.
Christopherson of the Sioux Falls Daily Argus-Leader. Mr.
Hippie has appeared sometimes in a dual capacity, as he is
a member of the Missouri River States Committee. Roscoe
Fleming, a free-lance liberal journalist at Denver, has writ-
ten a great deal about basin matters, even occasionally plac-
ing an article in the Denver Post.

In recent years the Kansas City Star usually has sent
youthful Karl L. Peterson, Jr., to report Interagency com-
mittee meetings. With his employer's knowledge, he ac-
cepted a private job for pay, writing a pamphlet descrip-
tive of the Interagency plan, in behalf of the committee, an
extra-official public body. It was arranged to compensate

134 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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him from funds of the governors' Missouri River States
Committee. Thus he found himself in the pay of public
officials whose activities he was assigned to report for his
paper, but neither he nor the Interagency members felt
that there was anything improper about this. The Inter-
agency committee retained him because it wanted a trained,
non-technical writer, familiar with its undertakings, who
could tell the story in an interesting style.

Frequently the basin reporter for the Omaha World-
Herald has been Max Coffey, a quiet, hard-working veteran.
Mr. Coffey telegraphed in for the front page of his paper
one of the most remarkable news reports to come out of
the development program. He was relating how one mem-
ber of the Missouri River States Committee, by the work-
ing of the unanimous consent rule, prevented adoption of
demands for more federal appropriations for the Inter-
agency work at a time when Washington was stressing econ-
omy. Mr. Coffey 's article, datelined Lincoln, Nebraska,
November 16, 1946, started this way: "If the people who
want the Missouri basin developed under the Pick-Sloan
plan are to succeed, they may have to secede from the state
of Missouri or divert the Missouri River around that state.
The governor of Missouri, Phil Donnelly, Friday blocked
efforts of the other Missouri basin governors to pass a reso-
lution asking that money be made available for orderly
construction of the Pick-Sloan plan."

Limitation of news space, and of funds available for
news, plays a large part in the restricted information on
local, state, national, and world affairs offered readers of
the press in many parts of the basin. The papers have the
benefit of the nation-wide press wire services, and some-

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 135

&&$><$><$><Z>$><S><X>$><^^

times of special news services, but their editors are forced
to choose only a small fraction of the daily news report for
publication. Most of the papers have such small news staffs
of their own that they rarely can spare men to cover matters
of important local interest occurring elsewhere; nor do they
feel they can afford the expense of such trips. Often they
are content to use verbatim — and without credit — the hur-
ried reports of harassed Associated Press or United Press
state bureau men, who usually have more work to do than
they can handle properly. The wonder often is that, with
the financial means at hand, the papers accomplish as good
a job as they do. Many of them have excellent plants, in
handsome buildings, with good mechanical equipment.
They usually do job printing, which frequently is the life-
saver of the business.

Editorial comment and opinion are restricted in many
of the papers. Editors or publishers usually have to concern
themselves with getting out the news, and sometimes with
business-office matters, so that time and energy for writing
thought-provoking or militant editorials are limited. The
press is more free of restrictive pressure from local business
interests than in the past, yet it is unusual to find editorial
declarations that stray far from the accepted pattern of
community thought as fostered by a town's dominant in-
terests. Sir Galahad of the press is no Don Quixote; he does
not wax too hotheaded if his lance is likely to shear out the
advertisements of a big merchant, income that may spell
the difference between profit and loss for his paper. By and
large, the press of this region has a limited outlook. It is
willing to accept the actions and views of public servants
without challenge. It seems to have little stomach for delv-

136 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<&>><M><;X><X><X>&^^

ing deep for facts in complicated, broad, or controversial
issues. Nevertheless, many able, intelligent, conscientious
publishers, editors, and staff men serve many of the papers
of both the larger and the smaller cities of the basin.

On the other hand, radio in the Missouri Valley is sub-
ject to the same criticisms and limitations that affect it
nationally — but in this region it has the tremendous advan-
tage of being able to reach its audience where the press
cannot. A notable illustration is in the field of politics:
campaigning by radio can be particularly effective in its
direct appeals to a thin and scattered electorate. A rancher
many miles from town on a rough trail can tune the radio
at home or in his car or plane to news broadcasts, speeches,
advertising, and, of special interest to him, the latest mar-
ket quotations on livestock or farm products.

There are perhaps 120 radio broadcasting stations in
the Missouri basin. The number may seem small, but is
actually large in proportion to the number of towns of fair
size. Concentrations of stations in Kansas City, Denver,
Omaha, and St. Louis offer a wide variety of programs.
Most other centers have only a single radio station or, at
the most, two stations. These are strategically located, and
the potential radio audience in the region doubtless comes
close to equaling the entire population. Only the most
remote ranches and mountain cabins are out of effective
reach of the ether waves. Some of the stations are in towns
of small population, where the appeal obviously must be
to a wide radius of hinterland, and where surely the adver-
tising revenue must be modest. The obvious explanation
of their existence is that once you set up your broadcasting

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 137

<><><><>0<><><><><><^<^^

equipment, the operating costs of such a plant cannot be
very large.

Nebraska has 24 radio stations listed in a standard guide
— five in Omaha, three in Lincoln, and 16 in 14 smaller
cities. South Dakota has 14; North Dakota has six, not
counting several in cities beyond the basin border. Wyo-
ming has 13, Montana about 20. Most of the stations are
essentially local institutions with localized programs. Their
music may come from records or from home talent. They
devote considerable attention to news, derived mainly from
condensations of the AP and UP wire services, but also
drawn from local sources. As might be expected, they place
a heavy emphasis on agriculture and related matters. An
important service is the announcement of weather condi-
tions and forecasts and of changing crop and livestock
prices. Frequently the international news broadcast in this
region is sketchy and the national news somewhat limited.
Many of the stations make considerable use of wire re-
corders to pick up public ceremonies or agricultural demon-
strations for later broadcast. This facilitates program
arrangement and also avoids the expense of land-wire con-
nections for direct broadcast from the scene of action, as-
suming that the scene is reachable by wires. It is noticeable
that little enterprise has been shown by radio in presenting
such a locally and regionally important event as an Inter-
agency meeting. One explanation may be that this would
cut into too much salable time. The alternative device,
however, of short broadcast interviews with leaders of
Interagency is frequently used. Radio in this region, as else-
where, suffers from its necessary condensation of news, and

138 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><^><^<^<^><^^

from the inability of the ear to distinguish as well as the
eye between fact and opinion, or to grasp the source of
news.

Location of stations in three of the big national radio
networks is confined chiefly to the larger centers. These
chains, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and the American
Broadcasting Company (ABC), have 32 station outlets in
23 cities. ABC leads with 13, NBC has 10, and CBS nine,
as listed in a standard reference work. Their locations are
given in the following table, with the cities listed in de-
scending order of size:

CITY NBC CBS ABC

Kansas City, Missouri x x x

Denver, Colorado x x x

Omaha, Nebraska x x x

Lincoln, Nebraska x

Sioux City, Iowa x

Topeka, Kansas x x

Sioux Falls, South Dakota .x

Great Falls, Montana x x x

Cheyenne, Wyoming x

Columbia, Missouri x

Billings, Montana x

Rapid City, South Dakota x

Casper, Wyoming x

Grand Island, Nebraska x

Bismarck, North Dakota x

Helena, Montana x

North Platte, Nebraska x

Scottsbluff, Nebraska x

Bozeman, Montana x

Jamestown, North Dakota x

VIII. RADIO CHALLENGES THE FOURTH ESTATE 139

<X£<^C*XXX><><><><£^^

Yankton, South Dakota x

Rawlins, Wyoming x

Shenandoah, Iowa x

In contrast, the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) is
listed with 38 stations in the basin. Another network, not
widely known nationally, is the Keystone Broadcasting
System, with 31 stations in all parts of the basin. It operates
with transcriptions only, not using land-wire hookups. It
is interesting and perhaps significant to find in this valley
at least seven regional radio networks. These picturesquely
named setups include the Z-Bar-Net in Montana; the
Golden Pheasant Network in four South Dakota cities;
and parts of these others: Columbine (Colorado), Great
Northern (North Dakota and Sidney, Montana), Inter-
mountain (Montana and Wyoming), Iowa Tall Corn
(represented at Sioux City), and Rocky Mountain (Mon-
tana and Wyoming). Only 25 radio stations in the basin,
mainly in the larger cities, have tie-ups with newspaper
ownership. Thus the radio and the press are predominantly
independent of each other, a fact that seems significant in
this regional challenge by radio to the press.

That latest boon of communications, the Bell tele-
phone system's coaxial cable, the sine qua nora of a tele-
vision network, has not penetrated far into the Missouri
Valley. Only a few spots in the valley have been able to
see the televised maneuvers of the Russian bear at the
United Nations or the allegedly whimsical antics of a make-
believe dragon in a Chicago studio, the Kefauver senatorial
investigation of gambling and crime at St. Louis and New
York, or the stirring speeches in the Truman-MacArthur
controversy. Kansas City has one television station, WDAF-

140 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

0<x-x^e><x*><><><^^

TV, owned by the Kansas City Star. Omaha has two,
KMTV and WOW-TV. Reaching a little way into the
basin is KSD-TV of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Early in
1951 it was estimated that there were 389,000 television
receiving sets in and near Kansas City, Omaha, and St.
Louis. The spread of this new medium has been fantasti-
cally rapid, and within a few months after that estimate the
number no doubt was appreciably higher — but there were no
additional stations to serve other parts of the region. How-
ever, who can say that the day may not come soon when
symphony concerts, presidential inaugurations, and Howdy
Doody will be televised throughout the length and breadth
of the Missouri Valley?

&&Z><$><>*<>4><<>3><><>^^

CHAPTER IX

From White-faced Cattle to Uranium

IN WHEAT and certain other crops, and in cattle, sheep, and
hogs, the Missouri basin cuts a big figure in the nation. Its
share of the national production of all these commodities
is appreciably larger than its geographical proportion of the
country, vastly larger than its proportion of the human
population. On the other hand, it has a low level of indus-
trial production. Given assured supplies of water and of
greatly increased electric power, this region could press into
the field of industry on a much larger scale. The current
valley-development program is intended to provide the wa-
ter, but whether it will give sufficient assurance of supply
remains to be seen. It is also adding greatly to the hydro-
electric generating capacity, but there is some doubt that
the program goes far enough in that respect. Concern is
felt over whether the necessary steam-generating plants will
be built to assure a "firm" or steady supply of electricity. If
the region obtains such needed facilities, it could offer vari-
ous advantages as a place for decentralizing vital industries
for the sake of national security. Of great interest also are
the huge, varied mineral resources of the basin, which have
remained unexploited to a surprising extent.

The region is relatively new as a place for farming. It
remained largely a grazing land for cattle until almost the
end of the nineteenth century. The new settlers, by and

142 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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large, did not make the best use of the land. They tried to
grow crops for which it was not suitable; they overgrazed
the grass and failed to conserve the soil; they wasted the
forests. Only in comparatively recent times has the move-
ment to overcome all this gained any real momentum. Irri-
gation in the Missouri Valley is only about forty-five years
old and has not become extensive. Agriculture there is
not yet fully developed. Nevertheless, the basin produces
slightly more than one third of the nation's wheat, about
one quarter of its corn and oats, slightly more than one
third of its sugar beets, about 40 per cent of its barley and
rye, and more than 45 per cent of its flax. In spite of this
leadership in certain crops, the valley produces only about
14 per cent, or not quite one seventh, of the nation's crops
of all kinds. This contrasts with the fact that the valley has
about one quarter of the nation's cropland. The reason for
this disparity between area and yield obviously is to be
found in the characteristics of climate, soil, and facilities.
Droughts and floods are likely to recur, in spite of the best
efforts of man. The view of government officials is that such
disasters cannot be predicted or prevented, but that the
proposed agricultural program and some measures already
in effect can reduce their ravages.

Farm and grazing land of the region is owned or op-
erated by 582,000 farmers and ranchers. The land they use
measures about 282,000,000 acres, or 440,600 square miles;
it covers 83 per cent of the basin. Federal officials estimate
that the Interagency plans for irrigation and flood control
will have direct effects on between 50,000 and 60,000 of the
farm families. Readjustments of the place or way of life, or
changes in the type of farming are expected to be spread

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 143

&<><><tt><><£*><^^^

over a long period, so they can be carried out in an orderly
manner. Gladwin E. Young, a leader of Interagency, the
Department of Agriculture's field representative in the ba-
sin, is of the opinion that any increase in rural population
that will come from additional irrigation in the region will
be offset, or more than offset, by the continuing trend to
larger farms, which involves a decline in the number of
farms and the number of farm families.

On the other hand, Mr. Young estimates that the agri-
cultural program for the basin, if adopted, will increase
farm production about 40 per cent by 1980 — 28 per cent
from improved land use and conservation, and 12 per cent
from new irrigation. The Bureau of Agricultural Economics
estimates that the nation's population will increase by al-
most 40,000,000 by 1980, to a total of 190,000,000. That
means a rise of about 26 per cent in the number of Ameri-
can mouths to feed, to say nothing of the demands for food
which may come from other parts of the world. The farms
and ranches of the basin are in relatively good position now
to face the growing need for their products. They are
manned by people with the know-how for the job, equipped
with modern machinery, well stocked with food animals,
and at present are generally in good shape financially.

A crop of considerable importance in certain portions of
the region is timber. The Forest Service estimates that the
annual cut is between 180,000,000 and 200,000,000 board
feet, or the equivalent of enough lumber to build from
18,000 to 20,000 five-room houses. Actual uses of this tim-
ber are of rather specialized character. Saw timber, railroad
ties, paper pulp, posts, poles, and piling come from the
trees of the main forests, which are in the Rocky Moun-

144 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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tains. These trees include ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine,
Douglas fir, and Engelmann spruce. Available timber in the
lower basin, mainly in Missouri, consists of oak, elm, hick-
ory, a little remaining black walnut, and some other hard-
woods. Some of the oak is used for flooring and some for
making whisky barrels; the other woods go for veneering,
tool handles, boxes, barrel staves, and railroad ties.

About one fifth of the nation's livestock and livestock
products comes from this basin. This volume is somewhat
large in relation to the geographical area. Included are 20
per cent of the nation's cattle, 28 per cent of its sheep, and
25 per cent of its hogs. The hogs, of course, come chiefly
from the corn-raising eastern and southern areas. Most of
the cattle and sheep are range animals put out to graze on
the grasses of the plains — nourishing grasses that often ap-
pear to a stranger to be nothing more than thin brown
weeds. The cattle are to be found in many districts through-
out the valley. They are principally beef cattle, except that
Missouri has an important dairy industry. A regular cycle is
followed in raising the beef animals: they are bred and
brought to maturity on the open ranges, then a high propor-
tion are sold for fattening in the corn belt, though some
grass-fattened cattle move directly to the packing plants;
every autumn the feed lots of eastern Nebraska and of
Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana buy range cattle, which they
cram with corn in the ensuing winter and summer. The
cattle population in the Missouri Valley was high in the
early 1930*8, but was sharply reduced by the droughts that
followed. The herds came back in the 1940*8, and of late
the ranges have been reported well occupied in most dis-

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 145

<XX><><XX><><><><^^

tricts. A common breed is the "whiteface" — that is, the red
Hereford with white markings.

Among the great sheep-raising states of the nation are
Wyoming and Montana. An official report for 1945 listed
Wyoming as the second state in the nation in value of
sheep and wool produced, ranking it behind only Texas.
The biggest sheep ranch is said to be the 3oo,ooo-acre tract
of the Warren Livestock Company near Cheyenne, Wyo-
ming. Sheep-raising is a hard, hazardous business. The sheep
is a pretty stupid creature with strong herd instincts, and is
exposed to many natural enemies. Often the individual
sheep or lamb requires personal attention, especially at
lambing time in the spring. The number of sheep in the
Missouri Valley fell off markedly during the 1940*5; herders
were hard to get during World War II, and prices for wool
and mutton were relatively low. There is a relationship be-
tween the number of sheep raised and the way the prices
of wool, mutton, and lamb meat fluctuate with reference
to the price for beef cattle. If you can make more money
raising cattle, you turn to them; if the sheep-wool index is
up, you go back to the bleaters. Sofnetimes competition of
foreign wool and synthetic materials has hurt. By 1950 the
price of wool had risen sharply to almost double its 1940
level, and it appeared that the herds of sheep in the Mis-
souri Valley would increase considerably. Perhaps this
growth may be encouraged by the report from a United
States Senate watchdog committee in December 1950 that
the nation faced a critical wool shortage because the Muni-
tions Board had failed to stockpile the commodity.

Much has been heard in the past about the bitter range

146 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><><><><£<><X><>^^

warfare between "sheepmen" and "cattlemen/' There was
hard feeling indeed, and the cattle-raisers especially re-
sented the inroads of sheep on the range. This was gen-
erally attributed to the damaging effects on the grasses of
the eating habits of sheep and their sharp hoofs. The rivalry
is said to be ended now. Its origin was in the era when the
broad public domain was unregulated or at least poorly
regulated. In that day the cowboys and the sheepherders
tried to beat each other to the public grasslands and some-
times took to force to get their way. Now much of the old
public land has passed into private ownership, and what
remains is under a better form of management. Federal
lands are leased to stockmen by the Forest Service and the
Bureau of Land Management on the basis of the proximity
of private operations, and there is competition for the leas-
ing rights. Strong political and economic pressures are
exerted to use the public lands for private benefit, and it is
evident that not all the evils in the situation have been
cured.

A form of animal life once important to the economy
of the region, but of relative insignificance now, is the fur-
bearers. Indeed, the fur trade played a dominant part in
opening up the Missouri River country, especially the upper
end, after the travels of Lewis and Clark. The Astors from
New York and many adventuresome trappers and traders
from St. Louis made fortunes in this business. For many
years furs found their way down the valley to the great mar-
ket at St. Louis. Some persons think the peak in volume
may have come early in the twentieth century. Changing
ways of life, the whims of fashion, taxes, and other hard
facts of economics all have figured in cutting down the

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 147

0<><><><c>O<><><£><^^

trade since then. Improved roads and other steps of progress
broke St. Louis's near-monopoly on the market. At one
time, for instance, peltry of bears had a place in commerce.
As one dealer put it, "That was when streetcars had open
platforms and the motormen wore bearskin coats in win-
ter/' Factories and other suppliers of steady employment
have drawn off many of the commercial trappers. As an-
other dealer said, "About the only trapping nowadays is by
old men and kids and maybe sportsmen." Muskrat and wild
mink have been the main catch for the market in recent
times. These skins are fashionable for women's wear. The
mink supply has been greatly augmented by "ranches" on
which the little animals are raised commercially within
fences. Raccoons, opossums, and skunks also come into the
market, in smaller volume, as do red foxes and gray foxes.
Occasionally a few wildcat, weasel, and wolf hides find their
way to the dealers. Federal poisoning projects have been
cutting down such predatory beasts as coyotes in the Wyo-
ming sheep country.

Industry has lagged seriously in the Missouri Valley, yet
there is general acceptance of the belief that the valley's
economy needs to stand henceforth on a broad base of in-
dustry and agriculture. Widespread realization of the neces-
sity of getting industrial development exists, and some new
enterprises have appeared, but so far the benefits are more
or less hit-or-miss from the basin-wide point of view. Since
the mechanization of farming has cut down the rural popu-
lation, it has generally been recognized that only new in-
dustry can increase the number of inhabitants in the valley.

Manufacturing data confined to the territory actually
within the basin unfortunately are lacking up to now. The

148 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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Department of Commerce has made some studies covering
all ten states of the Missouri watershed. This information
gives some idea of the situation, but obviously results in
some highly incorrect showings because it includes parts of
most of the states that are outside the basin and that have
little in common with the region under consideration here.
The Department has contemplated making detailed break-
downs from census reports, breakdowns similar to the find-
ings on basin population that it made by counties. The
result should offer the planners highly useful information.
In the meantime, generalities drawn from the state-wide
data furnish clues to the situation.

For instance, the Department noted that the Dakotas
were the least industrialized states in the region. It observed
that manufacturing has more than double the importance
of agriculture as a source of income for the people na-
tionally, but that the reverse is true in all the basin states
except Missouri, where manufacturing income exceeds agri-
cultural. The latter statement is manifestly incorrect, how-
ever, as applied solely to the portion of Missouri within the
basin. The departmental analysis also found that the pro-
portion of manufacturing workers in the basin states in-
creased from 27 per 1,000 population in 1939 to 45 per
1,000 in 1947. Again, however, the effect of busy industrial
districts beyond the basin boundaries must be borne in
mind.

Certain figures from the departmental study can be ac-
cepted readily for two of the states, Nebraska, which is
wholly within the basin, and South Dakota, virtually all of
which is within the basin. These may be tabulated as fol-

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 149

<><>o<x^<£><^e*><xx^^

lows, including the United States as a whole for compara-
tive purposes:

ITEM

Industrial workers per
1,000 population:
Nebraska
South Dakota
United States

Number of industrial
production workers:
Nebraska
South Dakota
United States

Value added by
manufacture:
Nebraska
South Dakota
United States

Proportion of income
from agriculture:
Nebraska
South Dakota
United States

1939

1947

13-7
7.8

59-7

18,000

5,000

7,808,000

$68,139,000
$19,619,000

$24,487,000,000

28.8
13.8
83.0

37,000

8,000

11,916,000

$260,658,000

$51,398,000

$74,426,000,000

1940

20.4 per cent
31.5
7-2

1948

3 5. 4 per cent
50.3

10.2

Incidentally, the Department pointed out that the dis-
parate increase between 1939 and 1947 in values added by
the manufacturing process was largely inflationary. Current
figures would make the comparison even more startling, the
inflationary movement having accelerated since 1947. The
rise in the proportion of income derived from agriculture
as between 1940 and 1948, and in spite of the relative gains
of industry in Nebraska and South Dakota, is doubtless to
be explained by the improved economic position of agricul-
ture generally.

An amazingly wide range of possible forms of industrial
development for this region can be listed on the basis of a
survey by the Midwest Research Institute, a private, non-

150 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

-&&&$><$«$><Z><tt><^^

profit agency at Kansas City, Missouri, which made its
study for the Army Engineers. The findings of the insti-
tute's survey are augmented by those of the Department of
Commerce, plus some things that are of common knowl-
edge. Such a list naturally includes some industries already
of local importance at some places in the valley and some
that exist in embryonic form, but it also shows many pros-
pects for new endeavors fostered by modern technology. In
many instances the possibilities depend on more electric
power, better water supply, improved transportation, or
discovery of ways to reduce costs. In the list of potential
industrial developments that follows, it is obviously not
feasible to suggest any order of priority or of rank in em-
ployment and dollar yield. The list:

Mining and refining metallic and nonmetallic minerals.

Metal fabrication.

Chemurgy: the conversion of field and forest raw materials
into manufactured products; examples: fats, proteins, carbohy-
drates.

Conversion of coal, lignite, shale, and natural gas into
synthetic liquid fuels and chemical raw materials; also, more
production of these basic fuels.

Chemical processing, including some critical defense mate-
rials.

Oil production and refining.

Frozen foods and canned foods.

Grain-milling, notably for flour.

Meat-packing.

Sugar-refining.

Processing dairy products.

Malt liquors.

Sorgo-syrup, from sorghum starch.

Poultry-raising, also poultry grit production.

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 151

<><^<><><><>0<><^C><^^^

Vegetable oils.

Seed-processing.

Wool-processing and scouring.

Paper and paper products.

Wood products.

Tanning, and leather products.

Phosphates, especially for fertilizer, also for detergents and
other uses.

Insulating-board manufacture.

Alfalfa dehydration.

Industrial alcohol.

Flax straw.

Soybean processing.

Ceramics, including brick, tile, and pottery.

Heavy plants of national defense types.

Light manufactures, producing, because of the high freight
rates in much of the region, articles of relatively low weight and
high value.

Service establishments, utilizing chiefly brain workers,
which do not need to be in big cities or to have extensive ship-
ping facilities.

Only a few small plants in the category of heavy in-
dustry, such as steel mills and foundries, exist in the region
now. A big advantage for development, as reported by the
Midwest Research Institute, is the fortunate presence of
abundant, inexpensive fuel in proximity to tremendous sup-
plies of easily obtainable raw materials. The basin and con-
tiguous areas from which it might draw are laden with vast
reserves of solid and liquid fuels and of major and minor
minerals. The institute's elaborate survey report repeatedly
describes the supplies of various natural resources as "in-
exhaustible," "unlimited," "immense," or "vast." Reading
this report gives the definite feeling that in the Missouri

152 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<£><><><&$><><><<><$><^^

Valley the nation has a sleeping giant. Unfortunately, the
report has not had wide publicity: only four copies of it
were made available for public inspection, filed in Army
Engineer offices in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, and
Omaha. This represents a questionable economy in saving
the cost of printing a valuable document.

The institute's study, an inquiry into basic economics
of the region, was made in 1947 at a cost to the Army Engi-
neers of $57,000. The purpose of obtaining it was to pro-
vide a guide for the Army Engineers' consideration of
whether commercial navigation in the Missouri River
should be extended upstream above Sioux City, Iowa.
Eventually the Engineers came out in support of the engi-
neering feasibility of navigation all the way across both
Dakotas. The report deals with the entire basin and even
the effects of utilizing natural resources beyond the basin
boundaries, rather than confining itself to the strip of terri-
tory that might have access to navigation.

Important minerals found not far beyond the Missouri
Valley, which could play a part in remaking the valley's
economy, include: copper, lead, zinc, iron, gold, silver,
molybdenum, vanadium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, tung-
sten, antimony, and arsenic. Some of the great copper
mines are operated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Com-
pany at Butte, Montana, a short way beyond the Conti-
nental Divide.

Underground resources awaiting development within
the Missouri Valley, as listed by the Midwest Research
Institute, include:

Uranium: more will be told about this later in this chap-
ter.

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 153

<XX>0<><><><><><^x^

"Vast stores" of nonmetallic minerals: ceramic clay; ben-
tom'te (South Dakota and Wyoming); gypsum (all the states
except Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota); volcanic ash.

A 'Vast storehouse" of coal, lignite, petroleum, and natu-
ral gas, augmented by oil shales.

Great reserves of phosphate rock, in Wyoming and Mon-
tana and, near by, in Idaho (to be discussed hereafter).

The nation's only known commercial deposits of burley
clay and high-alumina diaspore clay, in Missouri.

Huge salt deposits, in Kansas.

Feldspar and mica (South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming,
and Colorado).

Much potash, in volcanic rock (Montana and Wyoming).

Sodium carbonate (Wyoming).

High-grade barite concentrates (Missouri).

Gold: to be discussed hereafter.

A large outcropping of anorthosite rock, in Wyoming;
World War II research produced aluminum from anorthosite.

The nation's largest reserve of manganese, principally in
inferior-grade deposits along the Missouri River in South Da-
kota.

Iron (Wyoming).

Minor metal deposits: titanium, beryl, tin, tungsten, co-
balt, lead, zinc, chromium, copper, nickel.

Great stores of dimension stone and crushed stone, and
of gravel and sand.

Limestone, from which cement is produced in all states
except North Dakota.

One of the world's largest gold mines is the famous
Homestake Mine at Lead (pronounced Leed), in the Black
Hills of South Dakota. It has been credited with producing
more than $500,000,000 in the precious metal. Gold was
discovered in this vicinity by a soldier in General George A.
Custer's troops in 1874. The Homestake claim is said to

154 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

C<><><><><><><><><><><><^^^

have been bought three years later for $77,000. Lead, like
Denver, is a mile high; the shafts of this mine penetrate
the earth virtually to sea level. Lack of adequate labor is
said to have been hampering Homestake's operations. Lead
is a quiet, workaday town, perched on steep hills and ex-
tensively undermined. Its neighbor, Deadwood, tries hard
to retain some of the hell-raising flavor of the "old West."

Within sight of Helena, in a cup in the Montana moun-
tains, a dredge of supersize long has worked day and night
at extracting gold from the loose soil of the valley floor.
This is a self-contained operation, with the extracting
equipment inside the craft. The dredge, strung with elec-
tric lights, maintains a small man-made lake, in which it
shifts location as required.

Something more precious and vital than gold has been
discovered at Sundance, in the Bear Lodge Mountains of
northeastern Wyoming, about forty miles west of Home-
stake Mine. This is uranium, the fearful and wonderful
foundation of the atomic age. The discovery was reported
in March 1950 in an Associated Press dispatch from Wash-
ington dealing with the various sources of uranium avail-
able to America. The dispatch spoke of the Wyoming find
as ''the biggest boost for hopes of stepping up the uranium
output at home." It quoted mining men at Sundance as
saying this was believed to be "the largest deposit of ura-
nium ore and rare oxides anywhere in the world." The
discovery occurred in August 1949, but was not disclosed
until tests had been made. It was stated that the deposits
were long and wide, but could be worked by cutting in open
pits, much easier and cheaper than shaft mining.

Meanwhile, a $45,000,000 atomic plant of secret char-

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 155

^^^^•^^^^^

acter is being erected for the Atomic Energy Commission
about twenty-four miles northwest of Denver, between
Golden and Boulder, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountain
foothills. The 2,5oo-acre site had been largely wasteland.
Among the reasons for selecting it were relative military
invulnerability, good weather, and nearness to a big city.
It will employ about one thousand workers, will not give
off dangerous wastes, and will have only moderate require-
ments for electricity, water, and gas. The Dow Chemical
Company of Michigan will operate it for the AEC. An As-
sociated Press science writer, Frank E. Carey, has specu-
lated in a dispatch from Washington that the plant may
involve an entirely new process for making atomic-bomb
materials or an improvement of an old process. Radioactive
materials, it was disclosed, will be handled at this establish-
ment, described by AEC as a "production" plant.

In the spring of 1951, not long after the plans for the
atomic installation at Golden were announced, it was dis-
closed that AEC was preparing to build another big atomic
plant among the rough hills along the Missouri River
twenty miles west of St. Louis. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
asserted that this would be used for a new method of manu-
facturing materials, presumably fissionable, for the atomic
bomb. AEC said only that it contemplated a "major re-
search operation" there and that the site would be used for
"development activities." It was learned, however, that the
operating force was expected to number several thousand
persons. A contract was awarded for engineering and archi-
tectural services. Disclosure of the asserted use of the plant
for production of bomb materials came about as the result
of announcement by an electric utility system that it ex-

156 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<£>0<><£><><><£<XX><>^^

pected to build for this AEG facility an electric generating
station that would be big enough to meet the ordinary
needs of a good-sized city.

Ever since the war in Korea began, the awesome power
of nuclear fission, or "atom-splitting," as expressed by the
atomic bomb, has been uppermost in the public mind.
Nevertheless, this power has many beneficent uses and po-
tentialities, one of the greatest of which is as a new fuel for
producing electricity. The Interagency planners have made
note of this possibility, though as yet they have seen no
reason for altering their hydroelectric power scheme.

The first practical plan for use of atomic energy to make
electric power was related to the highly desirable exploita-
tion of the major phosphate rock deposits. It was advanced
in June 1950 by Charles Allen Thomas, distinguished
atomic scientist, chemist, and industrialist. He suggested
that a power plant of fair but not huge size be set up for
operation by private industry. Idaho was envisioned by him
as the site because of its particularly large phosphate re-
serves. A few months later, his concern, the Monsanto
Chemical Company of St. Louis, took the first steps look-
ing toward actual creation of such a plant. It entered into
an agreement with the AEC to carry on a study to deter-
mine whether the proposal would work.

Under the Thomas idea, uranium would be moved into
the plant under government guard and set up in atomic
piles for the usual chain reaction. The terrific heat of the
fission, heretofore wasted at atomic-bomb plants, would be
used as the fuel for the electric-power plant. Plutonium,
one of the new elements of the atomic era, more effective
for the bomb than the uranium isotope originally employed,

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 157
<^<^<^><^>^^^

would be an end product of the proposed plant. It would
be hauled away under government guard for use in atomic
weapons. Because electric power produced in such a plant
would be relatively costly, the private corporation operating
it would be paid a fee for making the plutonium. There
would be adequate safeguards for national security. Dr.
Thomas proposed that the output of electric energy be
utilized in production of elemental phosphorus from the
rock deposits.

Phosphorus and its phosphate compounds play a very
important role in our national life. They are notable plant
nutrients, and by far their biggest use is as fertilizer. The
prospect of obtaining them on a large scale either in or near
the Missouri basin is of great significance to this region, be-
cause much of its soil badly needs the enrichment of phos-
phates. A 1947 Bureau of Mines study reported that our
major potential fertilizer deficiency, estimated at 1,713,000
tons annually, exists in the western north-central, moun-
tain, and Pacific states, an area taking in much of the Mis-
souri basin. Ironically, the bureau found that large eco-
nomic resources for production of low-cost fertilizer exist
in these states. Availability of ample electric power at rea-
sonable cost is an essential for phosphate development. The
bureau's analysis showed that the bulk of phosphate ferti-
lizer from the deposits in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and
northeastern Utah could be expected, if developed, to move
onto the croplands of the Missouri Valley states. The Mid-
west Research Institute report agreed with this view, pre-
dicting a tremendous increase in use of fertilizers in the
valley. The institute also noted that many of the irrigated
soils respond well to phosphate fertilizer.

158 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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Florida and Tennessee have been the notable sources of
phosphates up to now, but their deposits are being de-
pleted. This makes the Western reserves loom in even
greater importance. The Department of the Interior has
called attention to the high rank held by phosphates as a
Missouri watershed resource. Some idea of the immensity
of the problem of utilizing the phosphate reserves has been
given by the Bureau of Mines. To meet the annual defi-
ciency of 1,713,000 tons mentioned above, the bureau esti-
mated, would call for a capital investment of $1,700,000,000
for plants and mines, exclusive of power installations. This
figure was at the 1947 cost level; it would be much higher
at current prices. Operating forces were fixed at 6,200 men.
Annual consumption of materials was placed at 5,139,000
tons of phosphate rock, 860,000 tons of silica, and 492,000
tons of coke. Furthermore, it was calculated that the pro-
duction would demand a continuous electric-power load of
950,000 kilowatts. As matters stand in the Missouri Valley
today, that is a huge electric capacity. By way of contrast, it
is about the right capacity to supply an industrial city of
1,000,000 population.

Where phosphorus in the soil is deficient, plant growth
is poor and maturing slow, and the plants themselves have
insufficient phosphorus. As a result, animals fed on such
plants grow poorly and are liable to certain diseases. Slow
maturing can be a troublesome factor where summer is
short, as in the northern part of the basin. Phosphorus and
other elements of fertility leave the soil by erosion, leaching
(dissolving by moisture), and excessive cropping. Phos-
phorus and its compounds are requisites of a proper human
diet, being essential constituents, for example, of flour and

IX. FROM WHITE-FACED CATTLE TO URANIUM 1 5Q

<xX*c><><><><><><><^^

baking powder. There is a large demand for phosphates for
manufacture of soaps and other detergents.

The United States is credited with possessing more coal
reserves than the rest of the world, and the Missouri basin
is regarded as the greatest single latent source of coal. Wyo-
ming has the biggest coal deposits of any American state.
Its supply is mostly subbituminous — that is, relatively low-
grade — but some of the beds are bituminous. Elsewhere in
the valley are found small amounts of the higher grade
semi-anthracite and anthracite coals. Lignite, which ranks
below subbituminous coal in quality, lies in the Missouri
basin in great quantity. The basin states have been consum-
ing more solid fuel than they have dug from their reserves,
but they could be self-sufficient.

The great significance of the solid fuel reserves is that
they are largely capable of transmutation into synthetic oil
or into the raw stuffs of the vast field of modern chemistry.
The synthetic oil can be refined into gasoline and other
motor fuels, as Nazi Germany demonstrated convincingly
in World War II. National emergency conceivably might
demand early exploitation of this resource. The change-over
of drab coal or lignite into substances that make the dreams
of chemists come true holds fascinating possibilities. The
solid-fuel reserves throughout America constitute more than
ninety-nine per cent of the nation's fuel reserves, the rest
being petroleum and natural gas. Mainly the solid-fuel re-
serves are coal and lignite, but a minor proportion of oil
shales is included. The national center of coal reserves is in
south-central Nebraska, not far from the geographic center,
which is in north-central Kansas.

Reserves of lignite, estimated by the Bureau of Mines

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at 939,000,000,000 tons, are practically untouched. They
constitute almost one third of our solid-fuel reserves of all
kinds. North Dakota has the lion's share of the lignite —
600,000,000,000 tons, according to the federal figures. East-
ern Montana is next, with 315,000,000,000 tons. The other
24,000,000,000 tons are in South Dakota and Wyoming
among the Missouri watershed states, and scattered in
Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Washington, California, and
Arkansas. Of the present annual production of lignite,
North Dakota turns out almost 3,000,000 tons, or 96 per
cent of the national output.

Much of the lignite production is by strip mining, in
open pits, and leaves behind great unsightly piles of wasted
earth. Tall, powerful steam shovels tear away the over-
burden of earth and dig out the thick veins of lignite, which
is loaded on motor trucks or railroad hopper cars. One such
operation, alongside U.S. Highway 83 at Garrison, North
Dakota, is said to yield several hundred thousand tons a
year. Indeed, the Army Engineers and their contractors
found themselves engaged in the wholesale mining of lig-
nite not far away, at the site of Garrison Dam. In connec-
tion with the vast excavations for this dam, it is estimated
that 3,670,000 cubic yards, or about as many tons, of lignite
will be removed and saved. It is too valuable to waste, but
it presents an economic and political headache. Within the
first few years after the start of construction of the dam, a
stockpile of 500,000 tons of the stuff was built up on the
east side of the river, and several hundred thousand addi-
tional tons were stored in several piles on the west side.
Army Engineers drive visitors over the bigger stockpile in
buses or cars as a means of impressing them. The cost of

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>^<^><^><^><^>^^

salvaging this lignite has run about thirty cents per ton
higher than the expense of merely shifting earth. The lig-
nite's commercial price was running around two dollars per
ton, but private mining interests had no desire to find the
Army in competition with them. The government of North
Dakota has tried to find some use for the material, such as
employing it as boiler fuel for public institutions, but so
far has not been successful. A minor portion is consumed
in the central heating plant of Riverdale, the dam-construc-
tion town. The bulk, however, is piling up, a blackened
white-elephant by-product of progress.

One big trouble with lignite as it occurs in nature is its
high moisture content and low heating value. Its moisture
content is about 3 5 per cent, its heating value about 7,000
British thermal units per ton. (Ordinary domestic coal has
little moisture and perhaps 12,000 B.T.U/s per ton.) Fed-
eral experiments have shown that reduction of the mois-
ture to 5 per cent increases the heating value to 10,000 or
11,000 B.T.U/s per ton. The Bureau of Mines has been
working on various methods of drying lignite. If it can de-
velop an economical way of doing this, lignite may well
compete with bituminous coal. Outstanding consumers of
such improved lignite as direct fuel might be new electric-
power plants. Naturally, such an advance would be of great
aid to this power-hungry region. Recently the bureau com-
pleted a $750,000 lignite laboratory at Grand Forks, North
Dakota, the first to be devoted solely to research in lignite.
It includes a pilot plant for drying methods. W. G. Sloan,
however, told the Interagency committee at one of the last
meetings he attended that a larger plant, located directly
in the lignite fields, was needed. He said the Bureau of

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Mines had sought for three years in succession to obtain a
$125,000 appropriation to get this started, but that the r&
quest had been eliminated from the official budget at
Washington each time. The bureau also has been trying a
lignite-drying method at Golden, Colorado.

For several years the bureau has been operating at Lou-
isiana, Missouri, a test plant in which low-grade coals from
the Missouri basin have been converted to oil. One of the
first raw materials used was a Wyoming coal. This plant
started out using a process of conversion called hydrogena-
tion, which involves combination of hydrogen with the
original material. Lately it has been preparing to go into
action with a second process, gas synthesis, called the
Fischer-Tropsch method. This plant has turned out Diesel
oil good enough to operate a streamlined train on the
Burlington Railroad in a trial. The bureau also has been
making synthetic fuel from oil shales at Rifle, Colorado. So
far the end products of these plants have not been carried
to a high degree of refinement, but it is understood that
only normal manufacturing steps would be required to con-
vert them into high-grade motor fuels. Nevertheless, there
remains the difficult though not insoluble problem of bring-
ing these synthetic processes down to a cost level on which
they can compete with products made from natural pe-
troleum.

By a stroke of irony, three of the bureau's experimental
plants, at Grand Forks, Louisiana, and Rifle, are outside the
Missouri basin, though not very far outside. The fourth, at
Golden, is near Denver.

Meanwhile the oil industry of Wyoming has been
pressing ahead. Plans were made in 1950 for a new $6or

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e><>o<xx><><><>0<><^^

000,000 pipe line, 1,080 miles long, to run from Worland,
on the Big Horn River in the oil fields of northern Wyo-
ming, to the refinery center at Wood River, Illinois, near
the mouth of the Missouri River. Five major oil concerns
joined in projecting this common carrier for crude oil. A
$12,000,000 plant to extract sulphur from the natural gas
arising from oil wells was built near Worland in 1950.

An intensive movement is under way to exploit pe-
troleum believed to lie beneath the plains of North Dakota.
What has been called one of the largest blocks of oil-land
leases ever assembled in the history of the business has been
obtained by Union Oil Company of California, with in-
terests taken also by Signal Oil and Gas Company and Han-
cock Oil Company. The block covers more than 2,000,000
acres, including 12,000 individual leases. The press has re-
ported that various oil interests now have at least 35,000,000
acres, or seven ninths of North Dakota, under lease. At the
remote town of Tioga, in northwestern North Dakota, an
oil well reported by the United Press to be the first suc-
cessful well in the state was brought in by the Amerada
Corporation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April 1951. It was the
culmination of thirty years of wildcatting in the state. Some
North Dakota landowners bemoaned the fact that they had
sold oil rights too early in the boom, for they found that
neighbors who sold later obtained considerably higher
prices. Montana has an oil field near Shelby. One of the
great natural-gas pools of the nation is found in Kansas in
the southern part of the Missouri basin.

Some of the valley's slumbering mineral resources are
marginal in character. International conditions, economic
reasons, and technological advances, however, are likely to

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combine to make their exploitation desirable. Recently the
Bureau of Mines set up a team to determine the feasibility
of federal aid to private industry for "exploiting promising
mineral deposits in the Upper Midwest essential to the de-
fense program."

One of the marginal resources is the manganese at
Chamberlain, South Dakota, where expenditure of a few
million dollars in experimental and preparatory work is re-
quired to pave the way for commercial action. Manganese
and chromite are critical materials in national defense, yet
this nation has been importing something like three quar-
ters or more of its supply. A Department of the Interior
representative has stated that the largest known deposits of
chromite ore in the world exist in the Missouri basin, prin-
cipally in Montana. This ore is somewhat lower in grade
than that imported from Africa. The Bureau of Mines has
been considering means of beneficiation, or enrichment, of
the native ore. It has sent Missouri basin chromite to Boul-
der Dam, where electrolytic chromites have been made
from it by new methods that have appeared to hold prom-
ise. John Hersey has reported in The New Yorker that early
in 1951 Senator Murray called on President Truman to ask
for additional power for Montana because new plants for
chrome, manganese, and aluminum were being built there.

Talk of mining prospects naturally is not limited to
mining engineers. Everybody interested in the basin gets
into the conversations. For instance, I. J. Matthews, a dis-
trict manager of the Bureau of Reclamation, waxed en-
thusiastic before Interagency one day on the minerals lying
dormant in Wyoming. He said: "Why, we have titanium
valued at approximately $5,000,000,000 in Iron Mountain

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^<^<^<^<><^^^

near Cheyenne. Titanium is extremely critical and it is valu-
able in connection with the production of gas turbines and
in jet propulsion."

Then there is beryl, called an essential minor mineral,
important in national defense and used for a wide variety
of industrial purposes. Among its properties are hardness
and high electrical and thermal conductivity. Beryllium,
the rare metallic element in this aluminum silicate ore, has
uses in the field of atomic energy similar to those of graph-
ite and heavy water, and is employed for X-ray tube win-
dows and as an alloying agent with copper. The Black Hills
of South Dakota are America's main source of beryl. The
material is found chiefly in a granite formation known as
pegmatite, which also holds feldspar, quartz, and often
other minerals as well. The trouble is that beryl-mining has
always been incidental to recovery of the other minerals in
pegmatite. The beryl is hand-sorted, and particles of it get
lost in this process. The Bureau of Mines is engaged in in-
tensified research to find effective means of mining beryl
and recovering its small crystals.

If, in all this discussion of the latent resources of this
region, there seems to be constant repetition of the part
the federal government is playing, that is natural. In the
first place, many of these resources are important to the na-
tion as a whole. Secondly, the cost and character of the
research and experimentation and aid necessary are far be-
yond the means of the individual states, especially of the
less populous and less wealthy states in which many of
the resources lie in waiting. The interest of Uncle Sam's
agencies is universal. They have even figured out that the
extensive and useless-looking clays of the Badlands possess

l66 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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physical properties that might give rise to industries on the
adjoining plains.

The Missouri Valley is aware that it may benefit from
the trend to decentralization in industry, particularly to the
wide dispersal of factories essential to national defense. The
lonely plains, with mountains to their west and the more
intensively developed Middle West on their other side,
offer some advantages in the way of security for such plants.
The Department of Commerce has reported that the Mis-
souri basin has come in for considerable attention in the
planning of the National Security Resources Board and the
Munitions Board.

Planners for the basin also have pointed out that the
establishment of a few major basic industries would attract
a series of secondary industries that would help advance the
regional economy. If more wealth is produced in the region
and more people live there, the market for an endless va-
riety of things will grow: more houses, furniture, electrical
equipment, automobiles, radios, newspapers, food, cloth^
ing, and a lot of other things. The Midwest Research In-
stitute pointed out that a new cannery, for example, would
create a demand for more cans, jars, packing-cases, cartons,
bottles, caps, and labels. The region, if it develops indus-
trially, not only will produce more goods but will import
more goods from other parts of the country. The biggest
expansion in the basin in the 1940*8, according to the De-
partment of Commerce, was in food processing. This field
could have still greater growth with the modern quick-
freeze process. Regional Director Brokaw of the Depart-
ment of Commerce has asserted that industrial production
costs in the Missouri basin are less than in other parts of

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«>0C«><X><>O<><XX^

the country because the workers are more efficient. He also
has declared that workers can find better and cheaper living
conditions in this region than in the bigger cities.

His department has been interested in an effort to es-
tablish an industrial alcohol plant at a certain place in the
basin, but lack of an assured large supply of water has pre-
vented it. He explained: "The plant would consume 6,000
bushels of wheat a day, which isn't very much in this wheat-
growing country, but it would also require 1,000,000 gallons
of water a day, which it cannot now count on. Many other
chemical processes are developed to a point where produc-
tion could be started today, if we had water."

One of the quirks of the valley of contradictions is its
relative lack of breweries. As to this the Midwest Research
Institute report said: "Only 38 establishments manufactur-
ing malt liquors are located within the basin, and the region
in general is deficient in beverages. Expansion of this in-
dustry would provide additional markets for barley and
other grains."

[ '68 ]

<><>3X><><><><2><>$X><><><>^^

CHAPTER X

Suit Pattern for a Giant

THE biggest thing happening in the Missouri River valley
today is the federal program, with state co-operation, for
protection, control, and development of the water and land
resources. Estimates of the cost of this undertaking run into
billions of dollars, and a big, spectacular start has been
made toward carrying it to fulfillment.

This is the Interagency program, sponsored by the Mis-
souri Basin Interagency Committee. It is an enlargement
and outgrowth of the Pick-Sloan plan, the natural heir and
successor of Pick-Sloan. The Missouri Basin Interagency
Committee is a co-ordinating body representative both of
the numerous federal agencies involved in this long-range
project and of the state governments. It is voluntary and
extra-legal, one of the contradictions of the valley: unoffi-
cially official, but officially unofficial. It has no real power,
yet it has achieved growing influence and recognition since
it was set up in August 1945. Its establishment virtually
coincided in time with the atomic bombing of Japan, which
brought World War II to a close. The expenditure on the
Interagency program already has come close to two thirds
of the $2,000,000,000 spent on the atomic bomb before
Hiroshima.

Early in the 1940*8 federal officials at Washington real-
ized that some co-ordination of the independent agencies

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would have to be attempted in order to carry out work in
contemplation for the Missouri Valley and elsewhere. No
doubt this was at least a tacit recognition of the threat
against their established bureaucratic empires by the valley-
authority principle. They were taking early notice of the
idea of watershed regionalism. Their solution was the crea-
tion of the Federal River Basin Interagency Committee by
an agreement among heads of the Army's Corps of Engi-
neers, the Department of the Interior, the Department of
Agriculture, and the Federal Power Commission. Later the
Department of Commerce joined, followed not long ago
by the Federal Security Agency. This federal committee,
acting, as the cliche goes, "at the Washington level,"
brought into existence as its first subordinate the Missouri
Basin Interagency Committee, often called the MBIAC in
official documents. (The next subordinate was the neigh-
boring Columbia Basin Interagency Committee, and others
have followed.) As new federal departments were added to
the roster, the federal membership of the Missouri Basin
Committee grew from four to six. The state membership
consists of delegates elected by the Missouri River States
Committee, a strong, unofficial organization made up of
the governors of the ten basin states and technical aides of
the governors. At first the River States Committee put four
governors on Interagency, selected for geographical and po-
litical balance. When the Department of Commerce joined
MBIAC, a fifth governor was added to the delegation, but
when the Federal Security Agency was taken in, the gov-
ernors' group postponed action on enlarging their delega-
tion.

On the rare occasions when it makes formal policy de-

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cisions, Interagency acts only by unanimous vote of its
members. The chairmanship is confined to a federal repre-
sentative, chosen by the vote of only the federal members.
An aide to the chairman serves as secretary. The federal
members of MBIAC are selected by the heads of their
respective departments. Members of the committee, all
likely to hold their places at least through 1952, are:

Ex-head, Gladwin E. Young, Lincoln, Nebraska, field
representative of the Department of Agriculture for the Mis-
souri basin. His departmental job involves co-ordination of the
numerous agricultural bureaus in the valley work.

Charles E. Brokaw, Denver, Colorado, regional director of
the Department of Commerce. His region only partly coincides
with the river basin.

Ben H. Greene, Chicago, Illinois, regional chief engineer
for the Federal Power Commission. His territory also only partly
coincides with the basin. He succeeded Mr. Young as chairman
in July 1951.

Glen J. Hopkins, Kansas City, Missouri, representing the
Federal Security Agency. He is officer in charge of the Missouri
drainage basin office of the United States Public Health Service.

Harrell F. Mosbaugh, Billings, Montana, representing the
Department of the Interior as chairman of the Interior Basin
Field Committee, which co-ordinates the valley work of this
Department's various bureaus. Until the spring of 1951 he had
been a specialist in the basin for the Department's Fish and
Wildlife Service.

Brigadier General Don G. Shingler, Omaha, Nebraska,
Missouri River division engineer for the Corps of Engineers.
His territory exactly covers the watershed.

Val Peterson, Republican, Governor of Nebraska and
chairman of the Missouri River States Committee.

Sigurd Anderson, Republican, Governor of South Dakota.

John W. Bonner, Democrat, Governor of Montana.

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C. Norman Brunsdale, Republican, Governor of North
Dakota.

Forrest Smith, Democrat, Governor of Missouri.

Mr. Greene is the only member who has served con-
tinuously in Interagency from the start. He has rarely
missed a meeting. Neither Mr. Sloan nor General Pick was
among the original members. A regional director of the
Bureau of Reclamation, who at that time was Mr. Sloan's
superior officer, was the first Interior representative. After
Mr. Sloan succeeded him on MBIAC, the Department
evidently began to realize the full implications of the valley
program and set up its co-ordinating field committee, of
which Mr. Sloan was first chairman. He retired from federal
service at the end of 1950 and was succeeded by Mr. Mos-
baugh. General Pick was on duty in the China-Burma-
India war theater when Interagency was started. The officer
who had replaced him temporarily as Missouri River divi-
sion engineer was the committee's first chairman. Mr. Sloan
succeeded General Pick as chairman when the general was
promoted to Chief of Engineers. The Army Engineers fol-
low the logical practice of assigning the division engineer
to MBIAC. Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis, Jr., held
this post for two years after General Pick. When General
Sturgis was transferred to command of Fort Leonard
Wood, Missouri, he was succeeded by General Shingler.
The Department of Agriculture arrangement for several
years has been comparable to that of the Department of the
Interior in a realization of the need to attempt internal co-
ordination of bureaus. At first this Department was repre-
sented by a regional head of the Soil Conservation Service.

Two main principles have been followed in choosing

172 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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representation of the governors: inclusion of both the up-
per and lower parts of the basin and of both Republicans
and Democrats. Minnesota alone among the ten basin
states has shown virtually no interest in Interagency, which
perhaps is understandable, little of that state being in the
basin.

Functions of the various governmental agencies in Inter-
agency may be listed as follows:

Corps of Engineers: flood control, navigation, electric
power, stream control, water supply.

Department of the Interior: irrigation, power, and water
supply by the Bureau of Reclamation; appropriate services by
the Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land
Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Sur-
vey and National Park Service; and a financing arrangement for
the Smithsonian Institution for archaeological and paleontologi-
cal studies with the states.

Department of Agriculture: specifically a proposed
speeded-up program on a vast scale for agricultural development;
in general, services by virtually all of the department's ubiqui-
tous activities.

Federal Power Commission: study of the electric-power
supply and demand, and checking of all plans to see that the
maximum opportunity is offered for hydroelectric power devel-
opment in relation to other features.

Department of Commerce: economic and population in-
formation and surveys, Weather Bureau, Coast and Geodetic
Survey, and the Inland Waterways Corporation.

Federal Security Agency: notably for work of the Public
Health Service and in particular for work on stream pollution.

State governments: alignment of work of numerous state
agencies with that of some of the related federal activities; also
dealing with such difficult problems as the relocation of high-
ways necessitated by the big reservoirs.

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"Interagency program" is a term used here advisedly. It
is vastly more comprehensive and inclusive than the origi-
nal Pick-Sloan plan. It has taken in some big projects that
antedate Pick-Sloan; it has added, among other things, the
tremendous agricultural and soil-conservation program; it
has brought in a variety of federal agencies as partners in
the undertaking with the original Pick-Sloan pair (Bureau
of Reclamation and Army Engineers); and it is also treat-
ing the states of the area as planning and fiscal partners.
Indeed, what is going on here constitutes the preparation
and application of a huge regional plan. It is city-planning
plus, with a giant's slide rule and T square on a Gargantuan
set of blueprints. Pick-Sloan was essentially a combination
under pressure of the irrigation and electric-power plans of
the Bureau of Reclamation with the flood-control, naviga-
tion, and power plans of the Army Engineers. Within eight
months after Pick-Sloan was written into law the MBIAC
was established. Interagency has grown from a limited and
inconspicuous beginning to a lively device of big govern-
ment; it has stolen the show.

At the latest guess, the Interagency program contem-
plated the expenditure by all concerned of almost $14,-
000,000,000, including about $8,500,000,000 from federal
coffers at Washington. The rest would consist of more
than $5,000,000,000 that farmers and landowners would be
expected to spend privately on desirable and doubtless
profitable soil-conservation measures, and about $400,000,-
ooo to be spent by the states and to some extent by coun-
ties or other local units, mainly for soil control. Later esti-
mates are bound to send these astronomical totals higher
as the impact of inflation makes itself felt more; the figures

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given here were compiled as of 1949 or earlier. No idle
dream is represented by them, however. The only dust
gathered on a lot of the blueprints has come from the thick
clouds of pulverized earth that have blown over scores and
scores of actual construction sites. Expenditures and allot-
ments for Interagency work aggregated more than $1,250,-
000,000 through the fiscal year ended June 30, 1951.

For that sum of money, which even today is hardly in-
considerable, the valley has obtained, notably, the following
things so far: numerous dams and reservoirs either com-
pleted or under construction; extensive irrigation facilities,
including canals, tunnels, and pumping stations (though
little new land is irrigated yet); a start on the flood-control
works, which already has prevented substantial amounts of
damage in local areas; three quarters of the work on a nine-
foot navigation channel in the Missouri River between its
mouth and Sioux City, Iowa; some channel-stablization
work along the Missouri, which not only helps navigation
but also serves to protect some good bottomland from the
vagaries of the stream; a start on the extensive hydroelectric
power-generating and transmission program; and some ad-
vantages in the way of new places for public recreation on
and around the reservoirs and in the fostering of fish and
wildlife. In short, a very material start has been made on
the necessarily long-range program of development — a start
that serves to commit the valley and those responsible for
the program to proceed eventually with the completion of
many major features as presently planned.

Most of this was accomplished in a period of six years
after the enactment of Pick-Sloan. If all the projects of the
Army Engineers are completed by 1960 or soon thereafter,

~ t

s §•

"8

10. Garrison Dam on the Missouri River, North Dakota. Outlet
works will go under the curving portion of the dam in the fore-
ground. CORPS OF ENGINEERS.

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the best expectations will have been fulfilled. Some of these
remain to be started. The Bureau of Reclamation, which
feels that all but two of its key water-control structures
have been built or started, has estimated that its program
might be completed by 1980; however, the Federal Power
Commission, evidently more skeptical, has asserted that
the bureau might not get through until the year 2000. The
agricultural program, if and when undertaken, is designed
as a thirty-year job. Under strong political pressure from the
Missouri basin states, Congress was coming through hand-
somely with annual appropriations for the Interagency pro-
gram until the war in Korea started. Forthwith the allow-
ances for the fiscal year 1950-1 were sharply slashed. What
will happen in ensuing years, in view of the international
situation, is anybody's guess, but there will be demands,
generally well founded, to carry out as quickly as possible
at least the big projects that have been started, especially
those for electric power. President Truman's 1951 budget
message strongly supported this idea.

Regardless of this setback in funds, the Interagency
program continues to be a remarkable undertaking. "This
is one of the greatest peacetime movements the world has
ever known," Chairman Peterson of the Missouri River
States Committee has declared repeatedly. Sometimes he
has qualified this by suggesting that something Russia may
have done within its forbidden boundaries may be larger.

The most spectacular projects, of course, are the dams
and reservoirs. The number of dams has not yet been finally
determined, but may be something like 147, big and little,
not counting thousands of small structures envisioned in
the agricultural plan for the creeks and other minor water-

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courses. Outstanding among the dams will be six built by
the Army Engineers on the Missouri River itself. In the
phrase of General Pick, they will transform the muddy
stream into a "chain of blue lakes" across the two Dakotas
and eastern Montana.

Tremendous amounts of water will be impounded be-
hind the dams. The various engineers have agreed that all
dams in the valley program together will have maximum
storage capacity of 110,000,000 acre-feet. One acre-foot is
enough water to cover the area of an acre of land (43,560
square feet) to the depth of twelve inches. You get a better
idea of how much water this combined impoundment
would be after a little simple calculation: 110,000,000 acre-
feet would cover the entire Missouri River watershed with
water to the depth of about four inches; or it would cover
the state of Rhode Island to the depth of 140 feet. The
Army's six dams on the main stem will store about two
thirds of the entire capacity. Nevertheless many of the
lesser dams on tributaries are impressive engineering struc-
tures, with formidable volumes of water. Fort Peck Dam in
Montana, uppermost of this Army set, was finished some
years ahead of Pick-Sloan, but its full power-generating ca-
pacity has not yet been installed. The Army is engaged in
the long-term task of building Garrison Dam, North Da-
kota, and Oahe and Fort Randall dams, South Dakota. It
has been preparing plans for two other dams on the Mis-
souri in South Dakota, Big Bend and Gavins Point, but was
delayed in obtaining construction money for them. Presi-
dent Truman's 1951 budget message, however, provided for
going ahead with Gavins Point, as it is an important factor
in the electric-power installation. The Army is building the

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good-sized Harlan County Dam on the Republican River
in southern Nebraska. Besides Fort Peck, the granddaddy
of the system, dams completed by the Army include Cherry
Creek Dam, near Denver, and Kanopolis Dam, on the
Smoky Hill River in central Kansas, both flood-control
projects. In the basin of the Red River of the North, the
Army has completed Bald Hill Dam, on the Sheyenne
River in southeastern North Dakota, a collateral feature of
the Interagency program.

The Bureau of Reclamation has completed 38 dams so
far and had 8 others under construction in 1951. Those
completed are 10 from the Pick-Sloan plan, 18 antedating
Pick-Sloan, 9 for the Colorado-Big Thompson diversion,
and Kortes Dam, a power project on the North Platte
River in central Wyoming. Those under construction in-
clude Canyon Ferry Dam, on the Missouri River in the
mountainous section of Montana, and Boysen Dam, in a
mountain pass of the Big Horn River in northwestern Wyo-
ming. The Bureau of Reclamation also has built extensive
canals and tunnels for irrigation and some power plants.

What put Interagency in business as a regional plan-
ning agency was its decision, when it was about two years
old, to set up a comprehensive fiscal program. At this point
the question is not whether the planning is good, bad, or
indifferent — there are differences of opinion about that,
as will be seen later — but what the fact is. The answer is
that Interagency made itself a planning agency, de facto
if not de jure. It launched the fiscal program with some
caution, for fear the sensibilities of the federal Bureau of
the Budget or of Congress might be aroused. A terrific
volume of detailed work was required to achieve the thick

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statistical volume. To determine what activities of the
states properly deserved inclusion was especially difficult
at first. The scheme adopted was to show total estimated
construction costs, divided by agencies, projects, and states;
expenditures already made, current funds, desired annual
allowances for the ensuing six years, and the amount
needed thereafter; also annual costs of so-called continuing
programs of service or investigation, as distinguished from
construction. By the time the third annual revision was
made, in September 1949, the programing was worked out
in thorough and understandable fashion, and it was evident
that the powers in Washington were not disturbed by this
regional assumption of financial forecast. Actually the pro-
gram proved to serve a good purpose in putting into accu-
rate and comprehensive focus the whole picture of what
numerous separate agencies proposed to attempt. The year
1950 passed, however, without a fourth revision. A techni-
cal subcommittee worked on the matter, but delays in
congressional appropriations and uncertainties about the
future prevented action. Nevertheless, Interagency con-
templated resuming the program whenever feasible.

Each time there has been a revision the future six-year
period naturally has advanced by a year. The 1949 revision
took the data through the fiscal year ending June 30, 1956.
Its principal totals were as follows:

Estimated total cost (public construc-
tion) $8,519,350,127

Funds received through June 30, 1948. . 547,284,641

Costs, fiscal year 1948-9 194,121,116

Funds for fiscal year 1949-50 324,879,561

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Six-year program, 1950-6 (yearly avg.

$493,000,090) 2,958,005,580

Funds required after June 30, 1956 5,017,727,682

Annual costs of continuing programs . . . 49,072,408

The "grand total, land and water resources develop-
ment" of more than $8,500,000,000 was divided as follows:
Bureau of Reclamation, $3,290,579,217; Department of
Agriculture (mainly for its soil-conservation program),
$3,092,328,000; Corps of Engineers, $2,102,400,751; De-
partment of the Interior agencies other than Bureau of
Reclamation, $23,777,159; South Dakota, $7,066,000; Ne-
braska, $3,199,000. Other participants in the fiscal program,
although not involved directly in construction work, are
the Federal Power Commission, Department of Commerce,
Public Health Service, and the states of Colorado, Iowa,
Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

Interagency averages about nine meetings a year. It
tries to meet in each basin state except Minnesota annu-
ally. At first it always went to the capitals, but then it real-
ized that it could see — and be seen — more if it moved
around, so it has met in a variety of large and small towns.
It even held a floating session one fine spring day on a
pair of Army boats tied together for a leisurely voyage on
the Missouri River between Jefferson City, Missouri, and
a makeshift landing-place near the mouth. Originally there
was some idea of meeting privately, but that quickly dis-
appeared. Instead, the largest available hall is chosen. There
the committee members sit at a long table facing the audi-
ence, with a sign in front of each member to identify him.'
Committee members, even including most of the busy

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governors, are seldom absent, and the governors send
deputies if they cannot attend. The audience consists of
numerous major and minor officials of the Big Three agen-
cies (Army Engineers, Department of the Interior, and
Department of Agriculture) and of the state in which the
meeting is held, and usually, in the past, of groups of citi-
zens of that state. Occasionally there are delegations with
a grievance or a proposal concerning some particular proj-
ect. If the governor who is host sponsors them, they are
likely to be heard, but there have been instances when
such complainants got little or no chance to sound off.

Theoretically the meetings are deliberative and instruc-
tive programs for the benefit of Interagency's own members,
but in reality they are sounding-boards for ideas and a de-
vice to promote public interest and goodwill for the Inter-
agency program. Speakers, including the committee
members, generally address the audience rather than the
committee. So many assistants of the Interagency mem-
bers and representatives of special and self-serving interests
attend the meetings that the effect is somewhat like that
of a traveling theatrical company. This effect is heightened
by the practice of displaying large maps and drawings of
undertakings in the state concerned. These meetings have
grown into an important form of convention, and are
sought after by the towns. Badges are pinned on those at-
tending, and they are invited to service-club luncheons
and chamber-of-commerce dinners at which almost every-
body of any importance and some people of small conse-
quence get introduced and the leaders make polite speeches,
rephrasing what they have been saying all day. After the
novelty of Interagency wore off, however, the general pub-

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lie tended noticeably to ignore its meetings. Lately the at-
tendance often has been confined largely to those whose
jobs require them to be present, with only a handful in the
audience from the town where the meeting happened to be
held. About once a year, when it is timely to put the heat
on Congress for more appropriations, or when other prob-
lems arise, the governors call their Missouri River States
Committee into session the day before an Interagency
meeting.

Except in winter, Interagency and many of its followers
usually stay over a day to inspect the nearest dam or other
project. These inspections, conducted in a light-hearted
atmosphere, are actually informative and useful in creating
understanding of the immense program. Escorted by state
highway patrolmen, the party moves swiftly over the un-
dulating and sometimes dusty highways in a cavalcade of
buses, private cars, and official cars. Once one of the buses
got stuck in a narrow tunnel in the Black Hills and had to
back out. Later in the day it broke down in a lonely spot,
marooning its load of distinguished and minor figures for
several hours. Such an expedition crossed a cold, snow-
clad pass of the Continental Divide in Colorado twice in
one day. When the Garrison Dam work was starting, In-
teragency was taken across the river in an old landing craft,
amidst a shower of spray. The committee has cruised vari-
ous reservoirs in motorboats. In Montana its cars have
boiled up hillsides so steep that only goats should have
essayed them.

The co-ordinating function of Interagency actually is
carried out in the day-to-day contacts and communications
of the technical personnel of the various agencies. The

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committee gatherings have served the main purpose of
creating friendly relations and understanding among the
men of the ruggedly independent bureaus and agencies in-
volved. Proponents of this plan, including the Interagency
members themselves, insist that excellent co-ordination has
come out of this. Without doubt this is correct in large
measure. Operations have been made much smoother.
Publicly, all is sweetness and light. Privately it is quite
evident that some federal agencies hold certain plans and
tenets of other federal agencies in low regard. Now and
then an outsider can gather that officials of varying rank
have something less than the highest respect for the ability
or official conduct of their colleagues in other departments.
State representatives not infrequently speak out against
federal proposals. Maybe it is all part of a healthy shaking-
down process. If so, that's another long-range phase.

You could count on the fingers of one hand the specific
issues that have been settled formally by Interagency. Dis-
putes over the plans for certain projects have been hanging
fire a long time. On the other hand, the existence and in-
fluence of Interagency probably have prevented some other
conflicts from coming to a head, without letting them
reach public attention. The committee has come across a
few hot potatoes; like skilled bureaucrats and politicians,
it has tossed these about with ease. But perhaps the out-
standing thing about Interagency has been the outspoken
character of many of its deliberations. It has been amazing
at times to hear both the federal members and the gover-
nors face unpleasant or troublesome facts, which they often
bring out of their own accord. They usually have dealt
with such things in a statesmanlike way and not as parti-

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sans; furthermore, they have worked with a broad regional
point of view, not a provincial one confined within state
boundaries.

An outstanding factor in the whole basin is the great
desire for more water in the dry western part and the anxi-
ety to be freed of disastrous floods in the lower end. Indeed,
the 'Tick-Sloan law" itself— that is, the 1944 Flood Con-
trol Act — draws a sharp line at the ninety-eighth meridian:
the O'Mahoney-Millikin amendment says in effect that
water rising west of that line shall not be used for naviga-
tion east thereof in conflict with the needs of the western
side for domestic, farm, and industrial use and for irriga-
tion. The ninety-eighth meridian passes through the eastern
ends of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. These states
and the other basin commonwealths west of them have
their own special body and type of water laws, based on a
different set of principles from the statutes of states where
water is plentiful. All this has a distinct bearing on the
planning and the thinking in the evolution of the Inter-
agency program.

No single official document other than Interagency's
six-year fiscal scheme purports to give a comprehensive
statement of what the valley program is. It was proposed
to publish a descriptive pamphlet in 1951 for popular use.
Even the fiscal report, voluminous as it is, presents only an
outline, many details of which require explanation by the
particular agencies concerned. Various acts of Congress
have authorized many parts of the program, but certain
features have not yet received official sanction. The big
plan of the Department of Agriculture has languished in
congressional committees for a long time, awaiting action.

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The biggest single authorization is that for the original
Pick-Sloan plan.

What, then, makes up the Interagency program? In
broad outline the following is a summary of its major fea-
tures and of some of the incidental but desirable benefits
contemplated:

FLOOD CONTROL

The aim is elimination of all imundations of any conse-
quence. This applies to the Missouri River, especially in
its lower reaches, and to many tributaries, including even
Cherry Creek, Colorado, which has been dammed because
it used to flood Denver. Some of the dams are mainly for
flood control, which nearly all the others have as one of
their multiple purposes. For the lower basin, where numer-
ous floods, sometimes occurring every year or two as in the
1940*8 have caused heavy loss of life and huge property
damage, the plan provides for a series of dams in several
important tributary streams. These have yet to be started.
It also calls for strong earthen levees in every one of the
many stretches of low land on either side of the Missouri
in the 760 miles from Sioux City to the mouth. These
would protect 1,500,000 acres of fine agricultural bottoms.
A start has been made on the levees, with 180 lineal miles
of construction between Sioux City and Kansas City. Most
of the dams remain to be built. Special protection works
are in the plan for a number of large and small cities. No-
table among these are systems of concrete flood walls and
earthen levees in the low-lying but important industrial
districts of the twin Kansas Citys and of Omaha and its
neighbor, Council Bluffs. In approximately the first five

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years of building, the Kansas City installation was some-
what more than half completed. The Army Engineers
estimate that at least $10,000,000 in flood damages was
averted in 1950 by works so far constructed. The Omaha
district was protected from a serious flood that spring; so
was Mandan, North Dakota, when the normally mild
Heart River went on a rampage. The Army further claims
that annual damages averaging $50,000,000 along the prin-
cipal streams could be prevented eventually by the flood-
control works. Some persons have suggested zoning as a
means of keeping valuable private improvements from be-
ing installed on the flood plain.

IRRIGATION

Intentions of the Bureau of Reclamation as originally con-
ceived were to bring 5,000,000 acres of dry land into the
irrigation system and to provide additional water for 1,500,-
ooo acres now insufficiently irrigated. In the meantime
some findings have indicated that the acreages may be cut
down or some of the locations shifted. The biggest areas
in the original proposal for irrigation are: (i) northern
North Dakota, adjacent to the Canadian border; this seg-
ment is outside the Missouri basin, being in the watershed
of the Red River of the North, and Missouri River water
would be pumped there over a low divide in the contro-
versial Missouri-Souris Diversion scheme now pending;
(2) eastern South Dakota, to be served from the Oahe
Dam Reservoir; ( 3 ) northeastern Colorado, north of Den-
ver, where additional water already is being brought in
from the Colorado River through a tunnel deep under the

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high Rocky Mountains. Although about two thirds of the
Bureau of Reclamation dams have not yet been placed
under construction, officials assert that all but two of the
bureau's "key" control structures in the basin have been
either contracted for or built. The exceptions are two pro-
posed dams in Montana — Yellowtail, on the Big Horn
River, just north of Wyoming, and Tiber, on the Marias
River, just south of Alberta. In general, the bureau's dams
are far smaller than those of the Army, not only because
their basic purpose is different, but also because their sites
often are in streams where less water would accumulate.
Six years after enactment of the Pick-Sloan plan into law,
only 2,300 acres covered by that scheme had been brought
into irrigation, all in eastern Montana. Meanwhile, water
was taken to an additional 35,000 acres in northern Wyo-
ming on irrigation projects authorized prior to Pick-Sloan
but subsequently treated as part of the Interagericy pro-
gram. As can readily be deduced, the road ahead for the
irrigation job is long.

The mechanics of irrigation might make a long story in
itself. Much of the water is moved by gravity flow, but
there are important instances in the plan where water
would be pumped uphill, as it were, to reach arid fields on
higher levels. Indeed, bureau officials estimate that one
third of all the electric power to be generated at Inter-
agency dams would be used to pump water from streams
or wells. Some of these generating facilities would be avail-
able only for seasonal power production in the irrigating
periods, which are in the interval of about five months be-
tween spring and autumn; and their output of power would

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be entirely consumed in this pumping process. Even where
pumping is required, the main flow is by gravity. Districts
served entirely by gravity may lie at appreciable heights
above the streams supplying the water. This is possible be-
cause the water is tapped at some distance upstream and
conducted to the scene of use down gentle grades, while
the parallel river's natural fall is much sharper. Large-scale
projects may take water from a penstock, or opening, in a
multi-purpose dam, or they may be served by a diversion
dam designed for this particular purpose. The water then
moves, perhaps for miles, in canals and sometimes through
concrete-lined tunnels beneath ridges or mountains. Lat-
erals fan out from the main canals to reach all parts of the
tract to be served. Lesser branches lead to the individual
farms, the size of the channels steadily decreasing. Mere
ditches supply the fields. Gates, valves, and other regulating
devices control the flow, so that each farmer gets exactly
what he is entitled to and no more; but when the fluid
reaches the edge of the fields, it is up to the farmer to
spread it over the ground. Time was, not so long ago, when
that was a laborious, back-breaking job; men in hip boots
toiled at the ditches to direct the flow with long-handled
shovels. It is still a demanding task, but it has been greatly
eased by use of plastic siphons, which suck water from the
ditches to the land. Among the crops for which irrigation
has proved especially suitable are alfalfa, sugar beets, beans,
potatoes, small grains, pasture grasses, and garden stuff. The
valley already has 5,000,000 irrigated acres, resulting from
past public and private action, but only a little of which
came under federal sponsorship.

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ELECTRIC POWER

There has been almost constant revision of the figures both
for the generating capacity to be installed at the dams and
for the average annual output of electric power anticipated.
The revision has tended generally upward for both. The
latest available compilation, made jointly by the Federal
Power Commission, the Army Engineers, and the Bureau
of Reclamation, shows the total generating capacity that
might be installed eventually as 3,191,065 kilowatts. That
figure sounds large, yet it is only about two and one half
times as big as the capacity of the private utility system
serving the St. Louis metropolitan district. Furthermore,
a considerable portion of this is not a ''firm" or dependable
all-year supply, being seasonal and dependent on the vary-
ing volume of water available in the reservoirs. Also, 54 per
cent of this capacity would be in plants not yet built or
started; 21 per cent of it has not even been authorized by
Congress. The same compilation shows an ultimate average
annual output from the entire system of 13,749,000,000
kilowatt hours of current. This relatively small figure in
comparison with the generating capacity to be installed is
owing to the expected seasonal character of operation.

Almost one half of all the generating capacity and of
the anticipated output of power is concentrated in the
Army's plan for six big dams on the Missouri River, mainly
Fort Peck Dam and the three now under construction —
Garrison, Oahe, and Fort Randall. The last three are de-
signed as the biggest power stations in the entire basin
program, with combined capacity of 1,145,000 kilowatts.
The biggest power plant of the Bureau of Reclamation

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would be at Yellowtail Dam, at this writing held up for a
set of complicated reasons. That plant would be for 200,-
ooo kilowatts. Only slightly more than that capacity is in-
volved in eleven bureau installations now in use or under
construction. One of these is Kortes Dam, on the North
Platte River in Wyoming — the only project in the whole
Interagency scheme designed frankly and purely for power
production. This is a recently finished structure in a spec-
tacular rocky gorge. Its capacity is rated at 36,000 kilowatts.
Almost one third of all the anticipated power output would
come from South Dakota. Next but in sharply descend-
ing order of volume, would be Montana, North Dakota,
Colorado, and Wyoming. Nebraska would lag far behind
in volume, and a rather negligible amount is figured on from
some small streams in Missouri. The program contem-
plates no power plants in Kansas, Iowa, or Minnesota.

Whether steam-operated generating plants will be built
as part of this public power system, to assure a firm or con-
stant supply of electricity, is a wide-open question. There
also is the continuing prospect that some day atomic energy
will be used as fuel for electric generators.

The program provides for a grid of 8,000 miles of trans-
mission lines crisscrossing the basin. So far, 2,200 miles of
these have been put up or started, including some long
routes. One of the big stretches is between Fort Peck and
Garrison dams, about 250 miles. The transmission plan,
comprehensive in nature, is designed to reach those cus-
tomers for public power which are given preference under
a well-established body of law: rural electric co-operatives,
municipalities and other types of public distributors or
consumers. As in every other part of the country, there has

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been a series of bitter fights over the public transmission
system with the private electric utilities and other believers
in strictly private enterprise. The general notion of these
opponents has been that it is all very well for Uncle Sam
to erect the costly dams and generating plants, but that
the private utilities ought to get the power at the source
and handle all the distribution. Nevertheless, the plan for
a public power grid in the basin is such that one irreverent
engineer on a public payroll, who shall be nameless, re-
marked, in either jest or biting sarcasm: "In North Dakota
and South Dakota the distributing system resembles a large
fish net, with very little chance for a sucker to escape re-
ceiving government power."

AGRICULTURAL PLAN

This grand design is intended to hold the soil in place,
reduce the flood-producing runoff of water, and improve
the productivity of field and forest. It differs from the reg-
ular, accepted, nation-wide undertakings of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture only in time, for the proposal is merely
one of marked acceleration — the accomplishment in this
region in thirty years of what otherwise would be expected
to require a full century. The Department's voluminous
report proposing the program has long since been laid be-
fore Congress, but what will become of it is problematical.
The Interagency committee went on record publicly in
favor of it some time ago, and there has been no reported
outcry against it. It represents a staggering undertaking,
however, and the temper of the times may keep its fate in
doubt for a long period.

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The agricultural program calls for a long list of specific
measures for conservation and development of land, water,
and forest resources. It also would play a part in flood con-
trol, but in a relatively limited way. It was designed with
the intention of complementing the dams and related phys-
ical works being built by the Army Engineers and the Bu-
reau of Reclamation. One of the objectives is to reduce the
silt flow, and thereby prolong the useful life of the big
reservoirs and reduce the damage caused by flood-borne
sediment along the tributary streams. Another purpose is
to enhance the ability of public and private forests to help
maintain the water supply through proper handling of the
forest growth. The outstanding objective is to hold the soil
in place and thus to improve the productivity of the land.
Mr. Young, the Department of Agriculture representative
for the basin, has aptly described this program as the "grass-
roots part" of the Interagency plan: it must be carried out
field by field, creek by creek, mile by mile, by co-operative
effort of farmers, ranchers, and state and federal agencies.
Effects of the plan would reach most of the 582,000 farms
and ranches covering 282,000,000 acres in the valley. Secre-
tary of Agriculture Brannan has listed some outstanding
features of the plan as follows:

Improved land management for a "large part" of the crop-
land throughout the basin.

Seeding of grass and legumes on 20,000,000 acres.

Provision of cover crops and green manure annually to
protect 13,000,000 acres of now barren cropland.

Stubble-mulching treatment of 34,000,000 acres of grain-
land, a form of soil-working that reduces erosion.

Strip planting of crops and contour plowing, instead of the
old "square farming," on 63,500,000 acres.

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Shaping of 1,900,000 miles of terraces in fields to handle
water.

Limitations on grazing and, in some areas, on grass and
legume seeding, on 157,500,000 acres of privately owned range
and pasture land.

Construction, improvement, and use of more than 500,000
new stock ponds, 30,000 springs and seeps, and 78,000 wells.

Protection of grazing land with 166,000 miles of fire guards
(trenches), 65,000 miles of new fencing, and 2,000 miles of new
cattle trails.

Tree planting on 5,000,000 acres of forests, and reseeding
of 400,000 acres of forest range, also various protections against
fire.

Planting of more than 2,500,000 acres of shelter-belts
(groves of trees in long strips) and windbreaks.

Building from 14,000 to 16,000 small upstream dams and
400 to 600 desilting and debris basins. These would give tem-
porary storage for 4,800,000 acre-feet of water.

Constructing 4,500 to 5,500 miles of minor floodways,
10,000 to 12,000 miles of channel improvements on small
streams, and 60,000 to 70,000 miles of diversion ditches and
dikes.

Drainage of wet land.

Various aids to irrigation.

Help in developing rural electrification.

Soil surveys; research work; other scientific aids.

Extension education to help farmers and ranchers under-
stand and handle the program; also, augmented rural credit
provisions, to help finance the big private share of the job.

Mr. Young has reported that agricultural production
in the Missouri Valley would be increased by $660,000,000
annually under the agricultural program. This estimate
contemplates a 30 per cent increase in productivity of crop
and pasture lands.

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When the program was made public, Secretary Brannan
declared: "There is no magic and no wizardry in this effort.
It proposes to strive towards what nature, under the most
ideal conditions, does to replenish and strengthen renew-
able resources." The Department disclaims the idea that
soil control alone would stop floods, but insists that it
would help, especially in smaller tributary watersheds,
where much of the damages occur.

NAVIGATION

The Interagency plan, taking on a project that antedates it
by some years, provides for a nine-foot navigable channel
for the entire 760 miles between the confluence of the
Mississippi and Missouri rivers and Sioux City, Iowa. The
scheduled completion date is 1954. The plan presents the
possibility of an upstream extension of 896 miles, from
Sioux City to Williston, in the northwestern corner of
North Dakota. Williston, at the head of the maximum
reservoir that could be created by Garrison Dam, is the
last town of importance feasible to reach by boat. Beyond
it lies Fort Peck Reservoir and vast open country in Mon-
tana. To move from Sioux City to Williston, water-borne
traffic would traverse five prospective reservoirs and pass
five high dams by means of series of locks, or possibly canals,
or maybe even marine railways. The total length of possible
navigation envisioned is 1,656 miles, from the mouth of
the Missouri to Williston.

Enforced neglect of river and channel work during
World War II, coupled with rising costs since then, and

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aggravated by several severe floods and ice runs, played
havoc with the navigation facility. General Sturgis, former
Missouri River engineer for the Army, conceded recently:
"In places the river has reverted to its former wild state."
Nevertheless, within five years after the war the nine-foot
channel downstream from Sioux City was reported about
three quarters attained. Elsewhere in this sector there are
sandbars and shoals and other obstructions. The channel
has been fairly well established below Kansas City, and
the Inland Waterways Corporation, a government agency,
familiarly known as Federal Barge Lines, has been giving
service between St. Louis and Kansas City. Attempts to
operate as far upstream as Omaha have not been so success-
ful, but the barges make it from time to time. The barge
line has abandoned its Omaha office. One peculiar diffi-
culty encountered at times of high water is the inability to
pass a railroad swing bridge at Leavenworth, Kansas: the
effect of water and silt swirling around the exposed mech-
anism of the swing span is said to make it impracticable to
open the bridge for boats. In spite of the difficulties and the
delays in completing the river work, the Army Engineers
have reported some encouraging increases in barge traffic.
The volume still is not large. One interesting regular ship-
ment of late has been about 3,000 tons of steel monthly,
reaching Omaha from the Ruhr Valley of Germany, by
way of ocean vessels to New Orleans and barges up the
Mississippi and the Missouri. The present navigation sea-
son for the Missouri extends from about May i to Novem-
ber 15. If navigation should be extended across the Dakotas,
the season there might be shorter because of the long, se-
vere winters.

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BANK STABILIZATION

An incidental but highly important effect of the navigation
improvements on the river is that of protecting and stabi-
lizing the banks. It is estimated by the Army Engineers
that such protection is preserving hundreds of thousands
of acres of bottomland along the lower river. The Army
believes that the benefit from this already amounts to many
millions of dollars. When the channel is pegged in place,
the current stops chewing away the banks. You can see
along the stream countless places where rich farmland is
safe from this erosion, places where not so many years be-
fore the war it was a common experience at times of high
water to see huge chunks of ground, literally acres in a day,
cut away.

General Sturgis asserted: "The benefits from this pro-
tection to the river bottom of the main valley more than
equal the entire amount spent on the river channel."

Bank stabilization is a prerequisite to construction of
the flood-control levees.

OTHER FEATURES

The Interagency plan also includes these things:

Fostering of development of the vast latent mineral re-
sources.

Groundwork activities for inducing industrial develop-
ment.

Promotion of fish and wildlife, particularly in and around
the numerous reservoirs. Already the completed reservoirs have
attracted many anglers.

Provision of recreational facilities in and near the reser-

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voirs. These big man-made lakes attract vacationers and day
visitors, and are welcome places for boating in a region to which
that sport is new.

Augmenting the water supply for domestic and industrial
consumption and for sanitary flow in the streams, and abatement
of stream pollution.

Extensive surveys of the land; new mapping; soil classifi-
cation; and various other projects for basic information.

Studies of the life of ancient and prehistoric man. The
deep digging into the earth for the dams has provided a remark-
able opportunity for the archaeologists and paleontologists to
search with relative ease for evidences of mankind in past geo-
logical eras.

[ 197 ]

<£<><><><><><><3><3K><><><><^^

CHAPTER XI

Dams and Diversions on the Grand Scale

A DAM is a dam is a dam, you might think, especially
when dams come in scores, as they do in the Missouri River
watershed. The fact is, however, that these big, inanimate
structures have individual personalities; at least they seem
to have, in the minds of dam connoisseurs. Definitely they
possess marked engineering and structural differences; de-
signs vary considerably because the terrific force of water
acts differently under differing circumstances. Although
most of the locations are in the plains country rather than
in the mountains, there is a surprising variation in settings
and the character of surroundings. One thing the dams
have in common is the utilization of some sort of gorge
for each site. The gorge can be between mountain-like
walls, but frequently it is a natural cut worn through the
billowing earth in the course of geological time. The very
earth is a problem, for it frequently takes the form of clays,
shales, or chalks in which it is no easy engineering task to
locate and anchor a ponderous dam.

Many of the Interagency dams are, or will be, con-
structed of earth, rolled up by machine in vast volume
from the immediate surroundings, carefully compacted,
and then faced with heavy stones piled without mortar.
This is a departure from the common public conception
of a dam as a thing of concrete or masonry. In a country-

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side where the length of a dam may have to be anywhere
from half a mile to more than two miles, earth is the only
logical material. Concrete is used only for the powerhouses,
the normal water outlets, and the flood spillways, which
themselves are major items of construction. Compacting
into a solid mass of the earth loosened by the gigantic mod-
ern machines employed to cut and move it is effected by
careful rolling, plus settling under temporary ponds. Much
of the rolling is done by prong-studded steel drums, called
from their appearance sheep's-foot rollers. It is a passing
note of irony that hoofs of sheep can cut the range lands
and their mechanical counterparts help make the dams
designed to develop the region.

Fort Peck Dam, four miles long, was built by a differ-
ent method: that of the hydraulic fill, consisting of earth
thrown up by dredges operating in the river. This proved
unsatisfactory for structural stability, and the weight of
engineering opinion now favors the rolled-earth method.

Only superlatives and jumbo figures serve to describe
the outstanding projects of the Interagency plan. Take,
as a prime example, Garrison Dam: it will be the world's
largest earthen dam, forming the world's largest water res-
ervoir. It is the biggest single Interagency undertaking.
Begun in 1946, it will not be completed until 1955. The
volume of all excavation will be 86,000,000 cubic yards
(130,000,000 tons) of earth, rock, lignite, and miscellane-
ous materials. In contrast, the basement excavation for a
residence of fair size may be about 250 cubic yards. The
dam itself will be formed of 70,000,000 cubic yards of
earth. General Sturgis has pointed out that this volume
is twenty-five times that of the Great Pyramid of Egypt,

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 199

<><>0<><-><><>0<>C><>^

but that the dam is being built in nine years, whereas erec-
tion of the pyramid was spread over entire dynasties. The
contractor for one phase of this dam had an investment of
$2,200,000 in sixty monster earth-hauling machines drawn
by tractors of almost unbelievable strength. Each unit
hauled forty-five tons of earth at a fast pace. Not content
with that, the contractor experimented with trailers hold-
ing thirty-seven tons, but the rough terrain was difficult
for that added burden.

The site is in the midst of a broad expanse of bound-
ing plains, a dusty, wind-swept district of dry farming for
wheat and of livestock grazing. The eroded river gorge has
some green and fertile fields and numerous cottonwood
trees. The first job of the Army Engineers, who build their
projects by employing contractors, was to get a railroad
spur and a blacktop macadam road laid to reach the place
from the Soo Line and U.S. Highway 83, which are ten
miles east. The dam was named for Garrison, a town of
1,900 population ten miles north. It was located at a spot
where the flow of the river has been known to range from
40,000 to 275,000 cubic feet per second. A new city, River-
dale, had to be built on the plateau at the scene of action,
for several thousand workmen have been swarming over
the job at times. Work usually has proceeded in two long
shifts daily, with batteries of floodlights at night, during
the average construction season of seven months. The
handling of earth and concrete is impossible during the
other five months, the winters being too long and severe.
It is hard to realize unless you see for yourself, but down
in the river gorge above and below the dam a stranger can
get lost in the maze of dusty work roads. The contractors

2OO THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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have even installed electric traffic signals at some hazardous
points. A temporary bridge a quarter of a mile long crosses
the river to serve only the builders. Another steel bridge,
reaching high in the air, had to be thrown up temporarily
to hold big revolving cranes employed on the intake struc-
ture.

The dam, which is slowly taking shape over the years,
will be 12,000 feet (two and one quarter miles) in length.
It will rise 210 feet above the river bed. In cross-section
its shape is triangular except for a somewhat flattened apex.
The base will be 2,600 feet (approximately half a mile)
in width, measured in the direction of stream flow; the
top will be 60 feet wide, with space for a public highway.
Buried within the dam will be a core of sheet steel piling
to give added strength.

There will be a concrete spillway 3,300 feet long set
in a deep notch cut through the bank on the eastern
(Riverdale) side of the site. This is a safety factor for time
of flood, to permit the automatic escape of excess water
in the rare event of such need. A channel two miles long
will be dug to lead from the spillway back to the natural
river downstream.

Normally water will move out of the reservoir through
eight tunnels, each of which is more than big enough to
permit passage of a railroad train. Their diameters vary
from 22 to 29 feet; their length is about one quarter of a
mile, being in a narrowed neck on the hillside at the west-
ern end of the dam. Three of the tunnels are for ordinary
regulation of the river flow for downstream needs. The
water will rush through them at a speed of about 100 miles
per hour. The other five tubes will serve the powerhouse,

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 2O1

<>0<£<><><><><c>O<^^^

one tunnel for each 8o,ooo-kilowatt generating unit. Re-
sistance of the heavy turbines will slow the water move-
ment in these outlets to a mere 11 miles per hour. The
flow will strike the ring of blades or paddles that form the
turbine and will make that machine revolve on its fat,
shiny, vertical shaft. The shaft will cause the generator to
spin rapidly, and, lo! current will flow through thick wires
strung across the lonely plains. On the upstream side of
the dam the intake works, where use of the tunnels will be
controlled, will rise 259 feet, or about as high as the tower
of the state Capitol, seventy-five miles southeast at Bis-
marck. Across the bottomland west of the present course
of the river a long, curving channel has been dug to guide
water into the intake when the time comes. A similar but
shorter channel will be dug for a downstream outlet. To
achieve the freest flow with minimum turbulence in this
outlet, studies were made on a scale model at the laboratory
of the Army Engineers at Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The ground at the site of the tunnels is a sort of crum-
bling clay known to geologists as Fort Union shale, the
same sort of soft but impervious or moisture-proof material
found in the badlands of western North Dakota. The en-
gineers found no past experience with heavy construction
in this rather tricky stuff. They therefore began one of the
tunnels as quickly as possible in 1949, for test purposes.
They wanted to know what would happen to the circular
tube as huge quantities of earth were piled above it as part
of the dam; how heavy the steel ribs reinforcing the lining
should be; and also the structural effect when the other
tunnels were bored in close proximity. One notable result
of this test was a reduction in weight of the steel ribbing

202 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<*£><><><><><><><><><><^

for the eight units from 22,000 tons to 11,000 tons, at a
saving of almost $3,000,000, because it was found the soil
conditions demanded less reinforcement of the tunnel
than expected at first.

Although Garrison Dam is essentially an earthen struc-
ture, the spillway, intake works, and powerhouse will require
2,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. The engineers say this
volume of concrete is exceeded by that of only three all-
concrete dams in the world (always excepting the possi-
bility that the Russians may claim something bigger) . Con-
siderable heat is generated in the mixing of concrete, and
there also are difficulties with mixture in chilly weather. Ac-
cordingly, the contractors have adopted the device of in-
jecting either ice or heated air into the materials, as the
need may be.

This dam is at the funnel point of a drainage area of
about 1 80,000 square miles, somewhat more than one third
of the Missouri basin. The structure will be closed off in
1954, according to present schedule, so that the reservoir
will start filling then. Two to five years may be required to
complete the filling, the engineers believe; the time depends
on what nature provides in the way of rainfall and snowfall
upstream. If, as, and when the reservoir is filled to maximum
capacity, it will hold 23,000,000 acre-feet of water, or more
than one fifth of the storage capacity of the entire system
of Army and Reclamation dams planned for the basin. At
the maximum, the reservoir will be 200 miles long, more
than 14 miles wide at some places, and more than 200 feet
deep in spots, and will have a surface of 609 square miles
and a shore line of 1,500 miles. An Army leaflet figures the
maximum contents as a mite less than seven and one half

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 203

<>o<x>o<x**^e><><^^

trillion gallons of water. At anticipated minimum stage, the
reservoir will shrink to a length of 120 miles and a surface
area of 208 square miles, with width and depth diminishing
in proportion.

The storage capacity of the reservoir is divided into
three levels. At the bottom there will be 4,900,000 acre-
feet for "dead storage" below the level of the normal out-
lets. This portion helps create the "head" or height needed
for effective power production; it also is the huge space set
aside for accumulation of the silt that will pour down in
decades to come unless the soil-control movement succeeds
in abating this waste. The next level up is 13,850,000 acre-
feet, designated for "multiple-purpose uses/' This is the
storage for power, for whatever irrigation may be achieved
in this project, for aid to navigation in the lower Missouri
and the Mississippi, for improved municipal water supplies
in parts of North Dakota, for recreational use, and for wild-
life and fish conservation. Space at the topmost level, 4,250,-
ooo acre-feet, is reserved for flood control; there excess
waters can be stored to protect areas down the valley. A
question not likely to be settled to universal satisfaction for
some time to come is whether use of the great reservoir
for all these intended purposes will be feasible. One of the
doubts is over the practicability of extensive irrigation. The
Interagency scheme contemplates that Fort Peck Dam, the
next barrier upstream, which was built with navigation and
flood control as objectives, will be converted to emphasize
irrigation and power after Garrison Dam goes into service.
The Army Engineers originally proposed Garrison Dam
mainly as a flood-control device, from which, however, a
water supply could be diverted to eastern North Dakota.

204 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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The original Sloan plan of the Bureau of Reclamation did
not contemplate the construction of Garrison Dam. This
project was made part of the Pick-Sloan plan two months
before enactment of that plan into law.

Thereafter for several years a lively controversy ensued
over the height — and therefore the size — of the Garrison
Reservoir. Local interests, led by some persons from Willis-
ton, the town at the upper end of the zoo-mile maximum
pool, succeeded for a time in having a limitation written
into the appropriation acts for this project. The dam was
designed, and is being built, to provide for maximum eleva-
tion of the reservoir at 1,850 feet above sea level. The limi-
tation provided that the pool could not be filled to an ele-
vation higher than 1,830 feet. This vertical difference of
only twenty feet might at first glance seem small. The Army
declared the effect, however, would be to reduce the storage
capacity to 16,200,000 acre-feet, a cut of thirty per cent;
to shorten the length by twenty-five miles; markedly to re-
duce power production; and to jeopardize the chances of
irrigation. One of the relatively few formal decisions by the
Missouri Basin Interagency Committee was made in August
1945 when it voted in support of the Army's i,85o-foot ele-
vation. The controversy dragged on in spite of this, and in
June 1949 the co-authors of Pick-Sloan had an open dis-
agreement over it before a congressional committee at
Washington. General Pick argued for 1,850 feet, while Mr.
Sloan spoke for 1,830 feet unless studies showed that the
pool should be higher. The exchange, as reported in a press-
service dispatch, was acrimonious. A repercussion not long
afterwards was an unsuccessful effort to prevent the re-
election of Mr. Sloan as Interagency's chairman. Eventually

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 205

<X*c*^$XX><*^<x^^

the opposition to the pool height dwindled and the con-
gressional limitation was knocked out.

Power production of Garrison would be enough for a
good-sized city's normal needs. The output will be fed into
the basin-wide electric grid. The average annual volume
after all five generators are in use is estimated at 900,000,000
kilowatt hours of firm, or dependable, power, and 812,000,-
ooo kilowatt hours of non-firm, or interruptible, power, a
total of 1,712,000,000 kilowatt hours.

The town of Riverdale, credited in the 1950 census with
population of 2,551, has been said by the Army to have
been appreciably larger than that at times. Once the con-
struction period ends, the permanent population of dam-
operating employees and their families is expected to be
only a few hundred. The permanent houses are of attractive
design and reasonably good construction. Temporary houses
are frame and have somewhat the appearance of barracks.
The layout of the town is good, a pleasant spot perhaps fifty
feet above the maximum reservoir height having been
chosen for it. Uncle Sam is the sole landlord and also the
town government through the medium of the Corps of
Engineers. A commissioned officer of the Engineers is the
town manager, and the corps employs a civilian police force.
Facilities include a school, a church, a movie theater, stores,
a hotel, a central heating system, a hospital, a jail, offices
of the Garrison Engineer District, a telephone exchange,
and a post office. There is bus service to Bismarck and
Minot. No alcoholic drink except beer by the case is sold
in the town. When an effort was made to start com-
mercialized gambling down the road a little way, the state
stepped in and stopped it.

2O6 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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The cost of Garrison Dam? Oh, yes, the cost! In 1945,
as World War II ended and preparations were made to
start building the dam, the cost estimate was $123,400,000.
By 1949 this had risen to $188,000,000. In the autumn of
1950 the guess was $202,000,000. By June 1951 the figure
had soared to $268,000,000. This steady revision upward
was caused by inflation, not by any important change in
plans. What the final figure will be by the time the job is
done in 1955 is anybody's guess.

An amazing feature of the Interagency program is a
series of projects spread out for more than 500 miles across
Montana and North Dakota and tied together as the Mis-
souri-Souris Diversion. This would take as much as three
quarters of the flow of the Missouri River at a point just
below Fort Peck Dam, in Montana, and pump it over a
low divide into the basin of the Red River of the North,
which is tributary to Hudson Bay. A fraction of this water
would be turned back into the Missouri in eastern South
Dakota, and some would augment the flow of the Red
River just about as far north as the border of Manitoba.
Bruce Johnson, district manager of the Bureau of Reclama-
tion, sponsor of the project, says that this diversion would
be "the greatest man-made water system of all time."
Naturally a scheme on such a grand scale is controversial,
and some serious doubts have been raised whether it can be
carried out as a whole. The project has been termed Mr.
Sloan's brain child. Eloquently raised eyebrows of Army
engineering officers and some other officials convey the idea
that enthusiasm for the plan is not universal, but the areas
that would benefit from it of course are its strong sup-

ii. (a) A modern conservation farm (right) contrasted with an
old-fashioned "square" farm in eastern South Dakota.

Paul Berg, St. Louis Post-Dispatch PICTURES.

(b) Bridge washed out by the great 1947 flood of the Nish-
nabotna River, near Hastings, Iowa, which also chewed of! large
pieces of the fertile fields. CORPS OF ENGINEERS.

1 1 1

fill

I ISI

il ii i

fill

• i

1 1

1 1 i i

1115

ill

12. The Capitol, Bismarck, North Dakota.

W. P. Sebens, GREATER NORTH DAKOTA ASSOCIATION.

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 2OJ

<$*$*XW*XX>^^

porters. The Army Engineers have favored a lesser diver-
sion from Garrison Dam.

The Souris River is a minor stream that comes out of
Saskatchewan, bends through North Dakota, and returns to
Manitoba. The diversion from the Missouri would connect
with the Souris. A relatively small dam in the Missouri
would draw water into a 95-mile canal leading to Medicine
Lake Reservoir. That pool would hold 5,200,000 acre-feet,
or more than a quarter of the capacity of Fort Peck Reser-
voir. It would be formed by a mile-long dam across Big
Muddy Creek, in eastern Montana. The Medicine Lake
impoundment would be directed to Grenora, just across
the line in North Dakota, where electrically driven pumps
would raise the water 90 feet to cross the divide. The next
step would be a move through the proposed Souris Canal,
130 miles long, from the eastern end of which the water
would fall 158 feet in a penstock. At this point it would
back up the little Riviere des Lacs behind a low dam for a
distance of 25 miles to the Saskatchewan border. Immedi-
ately south of the international boundary this pool would
supply an extensive system of main irrigation canals. Along
the eastern side of this broad irrigation area and inside the
United States loop of the Souris, a 5o-mile collection canal
would gather drainage from the irrigated lands so that it
would not find its way by natural courses into the Souris and
thence into Canada. Behind the protection of a diversion
dam in the Souris the water from the collection canal would
be guided across that stream and into another artificial
channel, the 3 5-mile Devils Lake Canal.

This canal would lead into a so-called regulating reser-

208 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

*>&&&$><$><&<X><^^

voir, 60 miles long, in the Sheyenne River. (That eastern
North Dakota tributary of the Red River is not to be con-
fused with the Cheyenne River of western South Dakota. )
The regulating pool would control water supplies for the
Sheyenne, whose mouth is at the Minnesota line near
Fargo, North Dakota; for the James River, which enters the
Missouri in South Dakota; and for Devils Lake. The aug-
mented flow in the Sheyenne would provide eagerly awaited
supplies for industrial and domestic use for Valley City,
Fargo, and Grand Forks, North Dakota; Fargo's neighbor,
Moorhead, Minnesota; and fifteen smaller towns. The
Sheyenne Reservoir would be high enough to enable a flow
back over the divide into a 1 2-mile canal leading southward
to the James River in the Missouri basin. Jamestown Dam
would be built in the James, forming a 45-mile reservoir in
North Dakota reaching upstream to this canal. The James-
town Reservoir would be for irrigation. Northward from
Sheyenne Dam, another canal, 10 miles long, would lead to
Devils Lake, once an attractive body of water, but now
shrunk to a salty pond. The level of this lake dropped forty
feet in a recent forty-year period. One purpose of the Mis-
souri-Souris Diversion is to restore Devils Lake with water
from far-away Fort Peck Reservoir. Outfall water from
Devils Lake would find its way back into the Sheyenne be-
low Sheyenne Dam.

Calculations by the Bureau of Reclamation a few years
ago showed that the diversion of water from the Missouri
would be 3,300,000 acre-feet annually, 75 per cent of the
average annual flow of the Missouri at that point for
1930-40, or 43 per cent of the average annual flow for
1880-1945. Somewhat less than half the diverted water

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 2OQ

^^^^^^^^^^

would go for irrigation. The rest would be dissipated by
evaporation and seepage, except for 3 50,000 to 500,000 acre-
feet that would return to the Missouri via the James. The
scheme contemplated irrigation of more than 1,100,000
acres of land in North Dakota, 160,000 acres in Montana,
and a small acreage in South Dakota.

This far-flung project speedily ran into difficulties. While
it was still new, the Kansas City Star, an ardent supporter
in general of the existing plans for the basin, opposed the
Missouri-Souris Diversion, particularly because it feared a
harmful effect on the supply of water for downstream navi-
gation in the Missouri. A question quickly arose whether
the diversion could be carried out without the consent of
the Montana Legislature — which might not be forthcoming
— as a Montana law prohibits appropriation, impoundment,
or diversion of Montana water for use in other states. The
statute stands, but officials of North Dakota and of the
Bureau of Reclamation have asserted that a way could be
found to go ahead with the plan anyway under "para-
mount" federal authority. A sharp argument arose quickly
over the relative desirability of Sheyenne Dam and Bald
Hill Dam, a project of the Army Engineers 70 miles down-
stream on the Sheyenne River. Bald Hill Dam is an inde-
pendent feature, not directly part of the Interagency pro-
gram and under the jurisdiction of a different division of
the Army Engineers, yet frequently considered as a sort of
cousin of the Interagency family. Congressional provisions
for the Bald Hill job required the cities and towns desiring
more water to contribute $208,000 for the site of that reser-
voir. The Bureau of Reclamation arrangements held no
such requirement for Sheyenne Dam, but were predicated

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on eventual payments by the municipalities for water sup-
plied them. The Army said Bald Hill Dam could control a
greater volume of water than Sheyenne Dam and could op-
erate by itself, whereas the bureau's dam depended on the
whole Souris Diversion plan. The Interagency committee,
in another of its few formal actions, put it up to the people
of the cities and towns concerned. The people, doubtless
thinking of the "bird in the hand" adage, chose Bald Hill
and paid their share of the cost. The Army went ahead and
built Bald Hill Dam, which will provide 70,000 acre-feet
of storage and might be of some help in flood control.

The Bureau of Reclamation received some relatively
small appropriations for construction of the Missouri River
Diversion dam and for investigations on the North Dakota
aspects. It made plans for this dam, but then decided to
look into possibilities of hydroelectric power production if
the dam site were shifted somewhat farther downstream.
One well-informed official snorted, in a private conversa-
tion: "They've spent a lot of money and have a plan for
a diversion dam and now are figuring on another one in-
stead, with power, but they wouldn't get much power.
What's the use?" Indications were that whatever power
might be produced would be in small amount, with the
prospect of only periodic or seasonal operation.

What appears to be the worst blow at the Missouri-
Souris plan came to public attention a full decade after the
early discussions of the idea, and after considerable in-
vestigation and other work, involving at least $2,500,000 in
preliminary expenditures. This was the disclosure that
much of the North Dakota land it was intended to irrigate
was not suitable for irrigation. Nevertheless, Mr. Sloan and

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<XtX^><><><>0<£><£><^^

his supporters retained faith in the project, buoying their
hope that it might be brought to realization eventually in
some form. But a detailed report on land conditions given
Interagency in October 1950 by Dean H. L. Walster of
North Dakota Agricultural College seemed to blow the kiss
of death at Missouri-Souris.

Dean Walster showed that large areas of the Souris Val-
ley in northwestern North Dakota have a soil of glacial
origin and of a character barring proper drainage — good
drainage being an essential of successful irrigation. Where
drainage is poor, it permits, among other things, creation of
swamps or the rise to the soil surface of alkaline substance
that turns fields into spotted deserts. Mr. Walster declared
that 500,000 acres of land in that district might as well be
written off as useless for irrigation. This is almost half of
the total irrigation plan for North Dakota, and compares
with present irrigation of only 20,000 acres throughout that
state. The findings, which had gained currency among
various agencies before they were made public, set the
Bureau of Reclamation and other public organizations off
on a search for substitute areas. That inquiry, which will
take some time to complete, is leading the soil specialists
across a broad band of territory, containing perhaps from
4,000,000 to 5,000,000 acres, extending all the way to the
southeastern corner of North Dakota. Although advocates
of the original Souris Diversion plan will not agree that it
has been proved unworkable, geographic and other physical
reasons, bolstered perhaps by the interplay of the bureau-
cratic process, make it seem likely that any new location to
replace the 500,000 challenged acres might be served by
water from Garrison Reservoir. By the same reasoning, an-

212 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<$>&$>&$><>><$>&&^^

other 500,000 acres in the Souris River loop might be
dropped out of the plan, if for no other reason than that the
costly diversion would not be justified to serve them. A
small diversion might be carried out in Montana for irriga-
tion within that state. The fight is not over yet and probably
will not be for some time. The Bureau of Reclamation
thinks that it will be 1953 before it can report on a new
plan, assuming it gets the desired funds for the inquiry.

Some persons questioned whether irrigation was work-
able in the rigorous climate of northern North Dakota, but
the Bureau of Reclamation declared that irrigated farms
had been successful in a still colder climate in Alberta. A
hurdle to be encountered eventually in the irrigation plan
is to get farmers and ranchers to sign up for the water if and
when it is offered them. Incidentally, it should be noted
that the Missouri-Souris Diversion plan calls for slightly
more than one-fourth of all the new irrigation proposed in
the Interagency program.

The cost of this diversion has not yet been mentioned
here. When the Souris scheme was new, in 1940, the esti-
mate was $137,000,000. By 1949 the figure was $423,000,-
ooo, with some hope of finding a means of making a sharp
cut. The next year there was less effort to be specific, and
the broad range of from $400,000,000 to $500,000,000 was
stated officially. Like the price of Garrison Dam, that of
Souris might be even greater by the time the project could
be carried out.

Another and more spectacular diversion of water, but in
a much more concentrated area, is being carried out in the
Interagency program, and is approaching completion. This
is the Colorado-Big Thompson Diversion, which is bringing

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 213

•$<><><$><><$><><&$><&^^

water under one of the most rugged ranges of the Rocky
Mountains from the Colorado River to supplement the in-
adequate irrigation supply in northeastern Colorado. Snow-
fall and rainfall on the eastern slope of the Rockies are
lighter than to the west. The Big T project, as it is nick-
named, also is producing hydroelectric power. It is one of
the undertakings adopted into the Interagency family, hav-
ing been authorized independently back in 1937. A news
article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said:

"The rocky face of Colorado is being made over by the
Bureau of Reclamation in the Colorado-Big Thompson
Diversion. Here are man-made lakes big enough to excite
awe in a region of shining ponds and tumbling streams;
here are dams large enough to be noticed among peaks and
ranges more than two miles high. Here also are tunnels,
concrete conduits, fat metal penstocks, canals, siphons, and
miscellaneous odd structures dotting the incomparable
landscape. This work of man does not seem to clash with
the age-old scenery. . . . Work on the project can be seen
scattered over a stretch of more than 200 miles, from the
western slope of the Continental Divide to the plains of
northeastern Colorado, which bloom fruitfully wherever
water can be turned on them. It is in the high mountains
that the most spectacular jobs have been done."

Most of the installations are in and near Jlocky Moun-
tain National Park, in the vicinity of two popular resort
centers, Estes Park and Grand Lake. A big storage pool,
Granby Reservoir, was built in a mountain valley to im-
pound Colorado River water. Flow of that stream below
the dam is maintained by a tunnel through a mountain arm
and leading into a canyon. Electric pumps will lift the water

214 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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181 feet from Granby to Shadow Mountain Lake, an arti-
ficial addition to Grand Lake. This lift was necessary be-
cause there was no place for a sufficiently large reservoir at
a higher level. One of the first features completed was a
13-mile tunnel that carries the water from the Grand-
Shadow combination to the watershed of the Big Thompson
River on the Missouri basin side of the divide. The cir-
cular, concrete-lined tunnel is big enough to drive a truck
through. It starts at Grand Lake at an elevation of 8,367
feet above sea level and drops on a gentle grade, some 3,700
feet below the crest of the divide. The route is directly be-
neath the impressive Front Range of the snow-clad Rockies,
northwest of Longs Peak.

The scattered installations are too numerous to describe
in detail. Among them are powerhouses, electric substa-
tions, and a big start on an i,ioo-mile system of transmis-
sion lines. A set of heavily insulated power cables, encased
in a pipe in which constant pressure is maintained, has been
suspended from the top of the tunnel. This million-dollar
job was cheaper than an overland transmission line, and
also avoided marring the scenery. The resort town of Estes
Park has been enhanced by creation of Lake Estes in the
Big Thompson River. Horsetooth Reservoir has been built
in the foothills west of Fort Collins; it required not only
one big dam to plug a mountainous valley, but three smaller
ones blocking off side canyons. The Blue River has been
dammed, over on the western slope of the divide, to provide
for a picturesque power plant at an out-of-the-way spot.

Irrigation benefits of the Big T will be spread over 615,-
ooo acres of land in a conservancy district organized under
state law. The district embraces a large piedmont area, plus

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 215

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a long, curving strip following the valley of the South Platte
River right to the Nebraska border. General Pick once in-
quired whether water supplied by the Big T could be used
to augment flows of the South Platte in Nebraska. Regional
Director Avery A. Batson of the Bureau of Reclamation re-
plied emphatically that this would violate an interstate
water compact and jealously guarded states' rights in water.
The general continued, in seemingly simulated innocence,
by asking whether it would be possible to prevent the flow
of the Big Ts part of the South Platte water from getting
out of Colorado. Mr. Batson replied: "That's a good ques-
tion, but I can't answer it."

Such critics as James G. Patton, president of the Na-
tional Farmers' Union, and Leslie A. Miller, natural-
resources task-force chairman of the Hoover Commission
on Governmental Reorganization, have needled the Bureau
of Reclamation over the big increase in costs of the Big T.
This situation led William Blair of the New York Times to
label the project the "Big Trouble." When the Big T was
authorized by Congress in 1937, the cost was estimated at
less than $44,000,000. By February 1946 it had increased to
more than $96,000,000, and six months later was reportedly
placed at $110,000,000. The following year it was more than
$128,000,000; in 1949 it was $141,000,000; and the bureau
announced it would approach $145,000,000 by 1950. With
some work yet to be done, the end of this spiral obviously
has not been reached. In the case of the Big T it was not
inflation alone that swelled the price, for there were some
engineering changes and additions of importance. The
bureau says that these included an enlarged supply of firm
electric power and more transmission lines.

2l6 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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Unlike the swollen costs of some irrigation projects,
these cannot be charged against the irrigated land, for the
conservancy district has an ironclad contract with the bu-
reau, dating from 1938. In this contract the district agreed
to pay up to one half the investment cost in Big T — but not
more than $25,000,000. The bureau in 1946 went around to
the district's board, which is headed by Charles Hansen,
publisher of the Greeley Tribune, and sought to talk the
district into shouldering some of the increase. The answer
was a polite but firm no. The district already had most of
the annual water supply allocated among farmers at a fixed
price of $1.50 per acre-foot, and the directors could not
imagine the farmers agreeing to pay any more. Besides this
charge to the farmers, the district has a unique arrangement
to meet a large fraction of the water cost by an ad valorem
tax on all property in the district, including the real estate
of the cities and towns, on the theory that everybody bene-
fits.

The Colorado-Big Thompson Diversion is a fait ac-
compli. Pending in the Interagency program is another
tramontane importation of water on a far bigger scale. This
is the Blue and South Platte Diversion, proposed by the
Bureau of Reclamation to bring water from the Blue River,
a tributary of the Colorado, to the north fork of the South
Platte River. There would be a tunnel more than 18 miles
long beneath the Continental Divide, with its eastern
terminus south of Mount Evans. Its purposes are irrigation,
hydroelectric power, and a large increase in the supply of
water for the city of Denver. Completion of this project is
calculated to take twenty-two years, but it is problematical
when or if it will get started. It might be given a boost by

XI. DAMS AND DIVERSIONS ON THE GRAND SCALE 21 7

0<><XX><>0<><>0<^£^^

the need for electric power and of more water for Denver.
As of 1949, the cost was estimated at almost $404,000,000.
Readers will have perceived that neither the ideas, the
plans, the money figures, nor the problems are small in this
Interagency program. Like almost everything else about the
Missouri basin, they are big and tough.

[ "8 ]

&><><><><$><>S><><><>$><^^

CHAPTER XII

Problems in Profusion

t

IT CAN scarcely be cause for amazement to find that a multi-
billion-dollar undertaking spread across a sixth of the na-
tion is beset with problems. Only the contrary would be
astonishing. The basic problems are planning and manage-
ment. Unfortunately, they have become confused with
fundamental political and economic philosophies and poli-
cies in the Missouri basin. That conflict of course is part of
a national question, for it has arisen in every other region.
Almost every problem in the Missouri watershed is perforce
controversial, none more so than the basic one of planning
and management. There are several earnest schools of
thought on this, and if you listen to the advocates of any
one of these schools, you may get the impression that it
alone offers the salvation of the valley.

The fact is that some of the strongest supporters of the
Interagency plan and, in general, of the present method of
procedure are aware of some shortcomings in the existing
arrangement. They have been arguing publicly for modifica-
tions and for changes in the underlying control. There is
less tendency among proponents of other ideas — notably
among those favoring a Missouri Valley Authority (MVA)
— to concede that their system might have faults or prob-
lems. The MVA will be discussed in the ensuing chapter,

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 21Q

«><>OOO<><>0<XxX><^<>^^

and the matters of planning and management will be taken
up as part of the concluding chapter.

Other problems of this valley of contradictions are re-
lated in the main to specific aspects. One thing they have
in common is the serious impact of the national inflation of
money. Not only has the cost of the projects risen sharply
from the grand scale on which the plan was launched, but
also this rise threatens to upset the financial justification and
feasibility of some of the undertakings. A summary of facts
about some of the specific problems follows:

PROVINCIAL STATUS

This region processes very little of its own products. An old
and valid complaint is that the wheat goes to Minneapolis
in bulk and is shipped back as flour; the lumber goes to
Grand Rapids and returns as furniture; the raw wool, laden
with dirt and grease, goes to New England and comes back
as suits or blankets; and the hides go east and return as
shoes. All this entails a double charge for transport, includ-
ing the unproductive expense of shipping the waste part of
the raw materials on the outward trip. And freight rates to
and from the greater part of this region are relatively high,
one explanation being the long haul involved. The freight
rates on manufactured products for the eastern part of this
basin are 46 per cent higher than for the northeastern
United States, while for the western part of the basin they
are 71 per cent higher. The situation is complicated by lack
of labor to handle local processing of raw materials and by
the thin population — that is, the lack of local consumers of
goods. A recent ICC order may cut freight rates.

22O THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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The character of landownership also is a factor. Through-
out much of the valley, land is held in large tracts, unlike
the farms of "family size" familiar in many other sections of
the United States. This tends to prevent the fostering of
localized community interests. It is not absentee landlord-
ism in the sense of the old English ownership of Irish farms,
but it cannot help tending toward a provincial status. To
some extent, especially in the big grazing and wheat dis-
tricts, there is corporate ownership of the land, a condition
accentuating this status.

There is heavy emphasis on east-west lines for all forms
of communication in the valley. It appears in the railroads,
the highways, the air lines, and even the telegraph and tele-
phone channels. This is particularly true in the broad north-
ern sector, the Dakotas and Montana, where all communica-
tions are funneled out of the basin and into the twin cities
of St. Paul and Minneapolis. A band to the south leads to
Chicago. Kansas City and Omaha are relatively less im-
portant terminals of Missouri basin communications. Para-
doxically, the Missouri River itself is the chief artery fol-
lowing an essentially diagonal line across the region.

A Minneapolis editor has stated that two large banking
chains in his city control many of the banks in North Da-
kota, South Dakota, and Montana. The implications as to
status of the region are obvious.

:v.v..-'.:v.:;/ JM

SUFFICIENCY OF WATER

Whether or not there is enough water in the Missouri River
system to meet all the demands is a battle of statistics and
opinions. This has been going on for several years and quite

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 221

<*><><><><£><>0000«^^

likely may continue until actual experience proves one side
or the other correct. Figures fly back and forth in terms of
millions of acre-feet. To an impartial observer, the big
trouble seems to be that records of stream flow in the past
are not sufficiently extensive to give a foolproof, depend-
able answer. Each side of the argument has used the avail-
able data in good faith to its own satisfaction. The question
is of utmost importance, for if there is not enough water
some of the intended uses under the Interagency program
may suffer. The flow in the Missouri necessary to maintain
a downstream navigation channel might be curtailed or
even cut off at times. The water supply for power genera-
tion might be restricted. The supply for domestic, indus-
trial, and sanitary use in the more populous eastern part of
the watershed, east of the ninety-eighth meridian, could be
endangered. Under both federal and state laws, the water
for irrigation and other "beneficial, consumptive use" is
protected in the western part.

Interagency's stand is that there is sufficient water for all
purposes — with the qualification that the navigation season
might have to be shortened in periods of prolonged drought.
It will be many years before the full effect of the Inter-
agency plan on the water supply can be felt, and mean-
while the question is more academic than actual. It is sig-
nificant, nevertheless, because the proposed fulfillment of
all aspects of the plan is staked on availability of water. Out-
standing among factors whose full application is a long way
off are the diversion of water for the proposed new irriga-
tion and, under the agricultural program, the contemplated
reduction of water runoff from the land and into the
streams.

222 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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Under Interagency auspices, some advances have been
made recently in gathering and collating information on
water flow. One conclusion was that it would be a long
time between droughts like the severe ones of 1934 and
1936. The subcommittee of Interagency technicians cau-
tioned, however, that no study of water supply would give
findings that would hold good indefinitely, that new checks
should be made at intervals of perhaps a few years. In 1944
an engineering subcommittee of the Missouri River States
Committee reported, in effect, that there was enough water
for all uses. This view has been upheld by statements of the
Army Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation and by the
inquiry by the Interagency subcommittee. But the course
of the controversy has produced a confusing maze of big
figures that appear to a layman to be conflicting and in-
sufficiently representative.

A formidable array of challengers and questioners has
arisen in the meantime to cast doubts on the size of the
water supply. These have included the following diverse
sources:

The Natural Resources Task Force of the so-called Hoover
Commission on Governmental Reorganization.

Leslie Miller, who was chairman of that task force. Mr.
Miller, a Democrat, was Governor of Wyoming in the 1930*5.

The Library of Congress — an impartial source — through
reports by an engineering specialist, Charles D. Curran, in its
Legislative Reference Service.

The Engineers Joint Council, a clearing house for five lead-
ing national professional engineering societies.

The Public Affairs Institute, a privately supported civic
agency at Washington, D.C., backed by various liberal interests.

The Regional Committee for a Missouri Valley Authority,

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 223

<&$><$><Z><&<><$><$><>^

the moribund organization of MVA supporters. Its attack was
spearheaded by Jerome G. Locke, an engineer, of Helena, Mon-
tana, once connected with the Army Engineers.

Governor Bonner of Montana, a Democrat, who fears that
his state would be deprived of water rightfully belonging to it
and badly needed there. He is a member of Interagency.

Governor Smith of Missouri, a Democrat, who has been
particularly concerned about water supply for some of the cities
and towns along the river in his state. He also is an Interagency
member.

Two reports under the title: "The Missouri River Basin
Program — Is There Adequate Water Supply?" were made
in April and October 1950, respectively, by Mr. Curran of
the Library of Congress staff. He concluded the first report
by asking five "questions basic to the prosecution of the
[Interagency] project." Summarized, these questions were:
(i) is the prime consideration construction of the au-
thorized works or determination of probable water supply
to warrant the works? ( 2 ) should more money be spent on
navigation works? (3) should additional navigation work
be suspended? (4) should the big agricultural program be
authorized "in view of the possible inadequacy of the water
supply"? and (5) should the entire group of programs be
revised to provide a single program that can be accom-
plished within the probable water supply?

The second Curran report resulted from certain addi-
tional data obtained. Its conclusion, in effect, was that
there was enough water in normal years for all the federal
projects now authorized by Congress, plus the pending ag-
ricultural program, but not enough in drought years. The
report added: "Therefore, before the full demand of the
present plan is created, the problem should be continuously

224 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><2><&<><i><$<><i>^

studied with a view to devising conservation measures and,
if necessary, curtailing the presently conceived project in
order to avoid any uneconomic over-development." Sig-
nificantly, perhaps, this report was distributed among the
members of Congress, which holds the purse strings of the
Interagency plan (or aggregation of plans).

After receiving some Corps of Engineers figures ending
with the conclusion that there was enough water for all pur-
poses, Governor Bonner issued a public statement, renew-
ing his attack on navigation. He said: "The disappointing
showing is that there will be barely enough water to supply
present Pick-Sloan [Interagency] projects and that more
than 70 per cent of western water, supposedly protected by
the O'Mahoney [-Millikin] amendment, will actually be
used for the proposed navigation channel. Since about 47
per cent of the water that passes Yankton, South Dakota,
originates in Montana, it appears that our state is taking a
terrific loss in the distribution of water that is contem-
plated. These facts raise a grave question as to the feasi-
bility of installing the lower river navigation channel, and,
before further funds are expended on it, it would appear
that a thorough investigation should be made by Congress."

Later, Governor Bonner received official notice of the
Army's proposal to extend the nine-foot navigation channel
upstream from Sioux City to Yankton. He sent a formal
protest to the Corps of Engineers, asserting that the water
for this purpose would originate west of the ninety-eighth
meridian and is "supposedly reserved for upper valley con-
sumptive use" by the O'Mahoney-Millikin amendment to
the 1944 Flood Control Act. This placed a seemingly un-
warranted interpretation on that amendment, which was

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 22 5

<&*X><XX^<M>^^

worded to allow use of western waters for navigation if this
did not "conflict" with consumption in the western area.
The Bonner protest, dated June 15, 1950, continued:
"Eight different engineering reports on probable water sup-
ply and water uses in the Missouri valley above Sioux City
are now before me. On careful engineering analysis, every
one of these seems to show a serious water shortage for
presently authorized projects. This is true with no allow-
ance made for consumptive use of water by a needed soil
conservation and better land plan such as is now pending
before Congress [the agricultural program]. In Montana
and, I suspect, in the two Dakotas, northern Wyoming, and
northern Nebraska there are still thousands of fertile dry
acres, and needs for better land use and restoration of
ground waters in many practical but still unauthorized
projects. I have seen no evidence that expenditures for
navigation facilities will pay out at present or any visible
future level of Missouri basin development."

IRRIGATION

Some of the most ticklish problems of the valley arise in
connection with the ambitious irrigation proposals. Of out-
standing importance is the question of cost. It has been
rising so steadily for a long time that serious doubts exist
whether much of the land for which it is intended will be
able to bear the burden of paying for it. Irrigation is not
provided as an outright government gift: the capital in-
vestment must be paid off by the benefited farms over
periods of forty years or longer. Through assessments for
the operation and maintenance of the local irrigating dis-

226 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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tricts the farms also must pay for the water they receive.
Reclamation law and practice in this country are about half
a century old, and the economic problems now involved
are nothing like those envisioned at the start of the system.
To be sure, irrigated land is worth more than dry fields, and
the flow of water adds greatly to the value of cash crops;
the question is whether the increment of values can hope
to match the rising spiral of costs.

One specialist in this basin, who is in a position to be
informed, has asserted recently that cost to the government
of providing irrigating facilities has mounted to $3,000 per
acre of irrigable land, while experience has shown that
farmers, on the average, could hardly be expected to pay
back more than $100 per acre over the full repayment pe-
riod. Such a repayment would amount to about $2.50 per
acre annually, plus the charge for water, which might be as
much or more. Thus the irrigating charge for a typical farm,
receiving water for, say, 80 acres, might exceed $400 a year,
cash over the counter. The government expert quoted here
is plainly not one of the enthusiasts for irrigation. If his
figure for costs is correct, the government's initial outlay for
irrigating 5,000,000 additional acres in this watershed would
reach to the astounding total of $15,000,000,000. It is dif-
ficult, however, to make accurate checks, inasmuch as the
figures vary by local districts, and you encounter various X
quantities and imponderables in an endeavor to arrive at
conclusions. For example, annual repayment charges might
be $5 an acre in some projects.

Interagency's attention was directed to the situation not
long ago through a paper by C. B. Conant, Jr., a Montana
representative of the Farmers' Home Administration, a De-

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 227

<*£><><><><X><><^^

partment of Agriculture bureau concerned with rural credit.
Mr. Conant said a farmer starting out on a newly irrigated
tract needed $7,600 for his own capital investment in the
first year for a house, a household water supply, a barn, and
a shed. He would need poultry and hog houses about the
second year. If he had average success, he would attain an
aggregate investment in his own facilities of about $28,000
in from sixteen to twenty years. The paper, based on some
Montana irrigating projects, showed how the farmer could
obtain long-term federal credit at reasonable interest for
this, to be repaid from farm earnings.

Comments at the Interagency meeting were interesting.
Mr. Sloan, whose federal career was mainly as an official of
the Bureau of Reclamation, said, after hearing the Conant
statement: "I can't think of anything more certain to dis-
courage the prospective irrigation settler than to hand him
this, paper on credit. If those figures are true, we ought not
irrigate another acre of land/' Then Kenneth F. Vernon,
Regional Director of the Bureau of Reclamation, com-
mented: "It's been said that without proper credit you're
going to have three successive sets of farmers on irrigated
land before they make a go of it." Mr. Sloan rejoined: "Give
those figures to every applicant for irrigated land and see
what happens." Interagency Chairman Young interposed:
"I think it's time we faced the fact that we haven't irri-
gated land merely when we have built a dam." Governor
Peterson made this rhetorical inquiry: "Is it a proper func-
tion of government to furnish capital for every one who
wants to go into a capital enterprise — and is there money
enough in America to do this?" Mr. Sloan explained then
that he would not object to the $28,000 figure if this in-

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vestment could be spread out over a long period of years.

In the course of his presentation Mr. Conant said:
"Many years will pass before a settler with inadequate re-
sources can bring his [irrigated] unit into reasonable pro-
duction. Meanwhile the family may live in a tar-paper shack
and have practically no money for adequate food, clothes,
school, and medical care. Contrary to the hopes of most
settlers, it costs about as much to develop a new irrigated
farm on a new project as it does to buy a similar one else-
where already developed."

Under the federal Reclamation Act, the elaborate and
relatively costly plans for an irrigation project must be pre-
pared and accepted by a vote of the people in the affected
district before construction can be carried out. This presents
an inherent difficulty. Out in the Columbia River basin
there have been instances where twenty years were re-
quired to complete this procedure, but in connection with
certain special projects elsewhere Congress adopted excep-
tions that enabled faster action.

There is a further difficulty. Once the dam and dis-
tributing system are built, the local district must enter into
a repayment contract before the water can be delivered to
the land. Mr. Sloan has charged publicly that "the long-
drawn-out procedure involved is delaying repayment con-
tracts." These contracts require the signatures of the indi-
vidual farmers, who must be confident that they can stand
the cost before they will sign. By administrative policy,
these contracts usually have been negotiated ahead of con-
struction. Mr. Sloan, however, in a sort of swan song as he
retired, told Interagency that only one such contract had
been executed, though many had been under consideration

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 22Q

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and negotiation for at least five years. By the end of 1950
there were ten instances of completed irrigation dams stand-
ing essentially idle for lack of repayment contracts. In one
of these instances, Heart Butte Dam in North Dakota, an
adverse decision against formation of a district was handed
down in trial court about a year after the dam was finished.
The Frenchman-Cambridge irrigation diversion in Nebraska
also reached the courts.

Not all the investment costs in irrigating facilities are
charged to irrigation-users. Electric power is a big incidental
feature, against which some of the outlay is charged. To a
lesser extent there is some offset for serving municipal water
supplies. You can get into an interminable welter of phi-
losophies and of accounting theories in trying to decide the
proper allocations. The original conception of Missouri
basin irrigation under the Pick-Sloan plan was that of treat-
ing the scattered areas, aggregating 5,000,000 acres, as a
single project for purposes of economic justification. The
report on the underlying Sloan plan had freely admitted
that many of the units could not be justified if they had to
stand by themselves. As he retired, Mr. Sloan complained,
however, that many administrative decisions had been made
in the Bureau of Reclamation with the effect of requiring
individual justification for each unit. He charged that this
brought about some "stretching of facts" to prove the
feasibility of projects. He argued for a single basin-wide ac-
count for irrigation and for drawing on power revenue to
help pay for irrigation. Furthermore, he gave a reminder
that he had been pointing out for years a fundamental dif-
ference in federal policies on flood control and irrigation:
most of the cost of flood control, to protect land from

230 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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water, is borne by the nation as a whole, while a great part
of the cost of irrigation, to provide land with water, is paid
by the landowners. On the other hand, such highly vocal
critics as Bernard De Voto question whether the nation at
large ought to share the cost of irrigation.

The National Reclamation Association, which is, in ef-
fect, the lobby of private interests backing the Bureau of
Reclamation, has shown signs of concern over the cost. It
has said, in one of its bulletins: 'The continued develop-
ment of our reclamation projects of the West requires, per-
haps more than any other time since our association was
founded eighteen years ago, the united support of our mem-
bers and the entire West. . . . Our remaining projects
are extremely costly. There must be a greater recognition
of the public benefits of reclamation. There must be a
liberalization of our present reclamation law. . . . The ob-
stacles confronting us are not insurmountable."

The Department of Agriculture, it has been disclosed
on good authority, takes the stand that each individual
project for irrigation should be justified on the basis of costs
and benefits involved. This point of view is opposed to that
expressed by Mr. Sloan, but in line with the administrative
policies of the Bureau of Reclamation.

The question of irrigation costs is nothing new. It was
recognized even before the Pick-Sloan plan became law.

One of the difficulties presented by the irrigation pro-
gram is the necessity for a considerable amount of pumping
to move water supplies uphill. It has been stated officially
that thirty-three per cent of the electric power to be gen-
erated by Interagency hydro plants would be consumed in
irrigation pumping. This, of course, adds to the costs of in-

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stallation and operation, and thus exaggerates the economic
problem. It also cuts down the volume of power that might
otherwise be available for industrial development. On the
other hand, some of the current for this pumping would be
generated from the "head" created in irrigation canals
rather than in the plants at the dams on the streams.

You can get a lively argument over whether there is any
sense in creating new farmland through irrigation after a
long period of surpluses of farm products and federal sup-
port of farm prices. The report of the Engineers Joint Coun-
cil questioned the need for more land, holding that in-
creased productivity of existing land would meet the de-
mands of growing population. An official statement by the
state of Missouri also challenged the justification of more
irrigation as opposed to "improving and conserving land
now in production." The comments of both the engineering
group and Missouri were directed to the President's Water
Resources Policy Commission. The matter has come up in
Interagency's discussions, but the comments there favored
more irrigation. The point of view was that the effects of
such development were long-range in character, whereas to-
day's farm surpluses could become tomorrow's shortages. It
was pointed out also that the effect of adding 5,000,000
acres of land would have only minor bearing on the volume
of nation-wide farm production. In addition, the argument
has been made repeatedly that America not only must be
prepared to feed its own markedly growing number of peo-
ple, but should also be in a position to help meet the needs
of many hungry areas of the world in the interests of de-
mocracy. On a lesser scale, it has been argued that irrigation
would contribute to bringing more people into the Missouri

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watershed and to opening new stores and service shops in
local communities, with a beneficial effect on regional
economy.

One of the factors that have tended to slow public ac-
ceptance of new irrigation has been a long cycle of rela-
tively wet weather in the region. This persisted through the
1940*5 and into the 1950*8 and contributed definitely to
crop production that played a part in the outcome of World
War II. Some farms in dry country which might normally
be expected to welcome irrigation have got along well
enough with natural moisture. In some proposed irrigation
areas reaching toward the eastern parts of the Dakotas,
Nebraska, and Kansas, some people question the need be-
cause the normal natural precipitation is fairly good. What-
ever the reasons, the result has been so far, as heretofore
noted, that only 2,300 acres out of 5,000,000 acres have been
irrigated in the Interagency program.

The serious question of the big irrigation scheme in
North Dakota under the Missouri-Souris Diversion was
discussed in the preceding chapter. There are difficulties in
other areas. There has been much squabbling in Nebraska
and Kansas over irrigation plans. New irrigation in the
North Platte River valley in Wyoming has been talked
about, but a Bureau of Reclamation official has declared
that there is not enough water there. To make it work, he
said, new supplies would have to be brought from the
Colorado basin, drawn from the Green River in Wyoming
and the Yampa River in the Colorado mountains.

Not all irrigation is done by water drawn from streams;
a considerable part is handled by pumping water from the
ground. This type presents the basic problem of mainte-

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nance of the ground-water supply, which in turn is related
to the whole question of sufficiency of water.

NAVIGATION

The biggest question about navigation on the Missouri
River is whether it is worth the tremendous capital invest-
ment and the constant heavy expense of maintenance. This
is an argument of long standing between the railroads and
their champions on the one side and the rivermen and the
liberals on the other. Two subordinate civilian engineers for
the Army were riding one day in the pilothouse of an Army
survey boat when a Missouri Pacific Railroad freight train
went by, hauling some reels of cable and some carloads of
steel shapes. One of the engineers pointed to these goods
and said to his companion in quite a matter-of-fact tone:
"We ought to be hauling that stuff." (His possessive "we"
meant the barge lines, not the Army. ) The very month that
remark was made, the Missouri Pacific Lines Magazine re-
printed an article from a publication of the Chamber of
Commerce at Wichita, Kansas, which began: "A fake,
widely believed, has it that river transportation is cheap. It
is as false as the story that the moon is made of green
cheese."

The article went on to assert that the government had
spent about $328*000 per mile on the channel between
Kansas City and the mouth of the Missouri in the past
twenty-nine years — or almost enough to have paid for con-
struction of all four rail lines between Kansas City and St.
Louis at $88,000 a mile.

The estimated eventual investment cost of Missouri

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River channel work in the district below the Dakota dams
— mainly for navigation, plus the incidental stream and
bank stabilization — was placed at $277,300,000 as of 1949.
Indicated expenditures toward this objective up to June 30,
1950 were in the neighborhood of $188,000,000. Thereafter
the Army reported that the nine-foot channel below Sioux
City was 75 to 80 per cent completed. People used to re-
gard the Missouri as wholly unruly, a river that could not
be tamed. The Army has demonstrated clearly that this is
not so; given enough money, it can make the river behave
and stay put. Efficacy of the watery straitjacket is evident
even to the amateur eye, but the task of keeping the jacket's
seams repaired is unending. If this job is neglected, the
costly garment is likely to be torn to pieces by the wild
river.

In short, a huge federal subsidy is required to provide
and keep up the waterway. This has long been justified by
navigation advocates on the ground that the result is for
the general public good. In earlier days there was an argu-
ment that cheap freight rates for water-borne traffic would
serve as a yardstick to help lower rail freight charges. While
the principle of joint water-rail rates has been legally up-
held, there has been no broad, convincing evidence that rail
rates have been forced down by the competition of river
transportation. Rail rates are fixed in a national pattern by
the Interstate Commerce Commission. And as far as the
Missouri is concerned, there has been no effective competi-
tion yet, though shallow-draft barge movement has been
feasible at least as far upstream as Kansas City for some
years. If and when the nine-foot channel is finished all the
way up to Sioux City, and if and when navigation is ex-

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tended on up through the Dakotas, the question still will be
whether even a highly developed economy in the Missouri
basin would afford enough traffic to furnish financial justi-
fication. The Army Engineers, whose civil functions started
with navigation more than a century ago, insist that recent
surveys prove that "available tonnage" for the river below
Sioux City is more than big enough to justify the expense
by their standards. They assert that the incidental benefits
from their Missouri River channel work, attributable solely
to preservation of bottomlands, cities, towns, bridges, high-
ways, and railroads, already have amounted to more than
$215,000,000, a sum in excess of the channel cost to date.
Such benefits are figured to be accruing now at $20,000,000
annually. One ardent Army spokesman holds that the as-
signment really should be called "the navigation and stabili-
zation program."

Tonnage hauled so far on the lower Missouri has been
small compared with the booming business on the Missis-
sippi and some of its other tributaries. There was a marked
increase, however, on the Missouri in 1950 over 1949, with
the 1950 haul estimated at 150,000 tons. While this rise
was taking place the Army looked over the environs of the
river downstream from Sioux City and concluded that more
than 5,000,000 tons of freight are "suitable for commercial
navigation annually on the Missouri in the future." Even
if this is true, if the capital and maintenance costs were
added to the freight charges of the barge lines, the price of
transport doubtless would be prohibitive. As it is, the low
barge tariffs are inviting to shippers for bulky commodities
moving at a leisurely pace and subject to the long winter
shutdown of operations. Successful barge operations on the

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Mississippi have demonstrated that river movement is suit-
able for such things as gasoline, crude petroleum, sand and
gravel, fuel oil, coal, sulphur, kerosene, wheat, cement, corn,
and ores. On the Missouri a major portion of the movement
has consisted of materials for the Army's own river-control
projects. An average string of towboats, in a channel suf-
ficiently deep, can carry perhaps 14,000 tons of pay load,
which is fifty times what a typical early steamboat could
hold, and which also is equivalent to about five long rail-
road freight trains. Obviously, Missouri River navigation
cannot be put to a full test unless the channel is completed.
Only then might the anticipated tonnage be lured to the
stream: a single shallow or wild stretch could effectively
block boat traffic.

Missouri, with the largest population of any state in the
Missouri River valley, and the area in which the most men
and boats could be expected to work in navigation, would
seem to be a notable beneficiary of the channel develop-
ment. Yet this state, in an official statement to the Presi-
dent's Water Resources Policy Commission, had the fol-
lowing to say on the subject: ' 'There exists a six-foot chan-
nel at the present time, with a nine-foot channel authorized
and being built as fast as funds permit. And already plans
are being made for a twelve-foot channel, even before the
present authorized plan is completed. Such developments
are hard to visualize on a river like the Missouri, where
waterway traffic is admittedly an experiment and from all
indications will remain one for some time to come."

A problem in the suggested extension of navigation
across the Dakotas will be the engineering and substantial
cost of boat by-passes for the five big dams there. These

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dams will range in height from 45 feet to 240 feet; for the
taller ones a series of locks, rather than a single lock, would
be necessary unless the more spectacular alternative of
marine railways should be adopted.

Still another problem was referred to in a preceding sec-
tion— that of whether there will be enough water in the
river to sustain full navigation operations. One suggestion
has been for low dams for slack-water navigation in the
lower river.

The strong lobbies on both sides of the navigation
question will continue to assail Congress. And constantly
there is the physical problem of the river itself. The Army
Engineers know very well what they are up against there.

FLOOD CONTROL

While flood control of rather localized character is desir-
able at many places in the drier western part of the Mis-
souri watershed, the greatest need for it occurs in the east-
ern half of the region, especially in the Missouri River
proper and its larger branches in Missouri, Kansas, and
Nebraska. To a considerable extent the big upstream reser-
voirs will reduce or prevent flood flows onto the areas im-
mediately below the dams. The biggest problem lies in
providing dams on the big downstream tributaries and ex-
tensive levees along the Missouri itself below Sioux City.
The big upriver dams and reservoirs simply cannot assure
flood protection for the rich, fertile, populous valley of the
eastern end of this continental water funnel. Concentrated
rains falling in a relatively small area can cause catastrophic
inundations. The severe flood in the lower Missouri and the

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middle Mississippi in the early summer of 1947 was caused
entirely by extremely heavy rains persisting over a period of
three months in Iowa, northwestern Illinois, northern Mis-
souri, and eastern Kansas and Nebraska. The flooding oc-
curred only below Sioux City in the Missouri and below
Muscatine, Iowa, in the Mississippi. The upstream dams
could not possibly have held the Missouri within its banks,
though the Army Engineers calculated that the five dams
in the Dakotas, had they been in existence then, would
have reduced the flood crest by two or three feet at Kansas
City and thence downstream.

An outstanding flood-control feature of the Interagency
program is the proposed system of levees, usually desig-
nated ' 'agricultural levees," to plug up every gap in the
lowlands along the fringes of the Missouri River from
Sioux City to the mouth. The cost of this system was esti-
mated by the Army Engineers, as of 1950, at $130,250,000
— including $119,700,000 federal cost and $10,550,000 lo-
cal. Reported allotments up to June 30, 1950, were $21,-
697,700. The river has "reverted to its former wild state"
in many stretches because of the enforced neglect of the
channel in the 1940*8. As a result, General Sturgis has de-
clared: 'This condition makes it undesirable to proceed on
schedule with the agricultural levee program." So far no at-
tempt has been made to provide levees between Kansas
City and the mouth, the stretch where the Missouri is at
its broadest and where frequently the greatest flood damage
is done. The Army Engineers say levees in this section are
inadvisable unless flood reservoirs are built on the lower
basin tributaries. The levee system proposed by the Army
would cover 1,140 lineal miles, or just about three quarters

14. Large petroleum refinery on the North Platte River at
Casper, Wyoming.

Ken, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION OF

CENTRAL WYOMING.

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 239

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of the entire distance, on both sides of the river, between
Sioux City and the mouth.

The levees, triangular in cross-section, would average
perhaps 13 feet higher than present ground level. This ele-
vation, plus the fact that the sites are on considerably
higher ground than the riverbanks, would be counted on to
ward off the extreme floods envisioned. Earth would be
piled up to form these barricades, which would have an
average width of 80 feet at the base. Thus the sites of the
levees would cover about 11,000 acres of bottomland, which
might easily be found to be worth considerably more than
$1,000,000. Now, here is a catch: under the ruling federal
law, the Flood Control Act of 1936, local communities
must provide the sites and make binding agreements to
shoulder the costs of maintaining the levees. The usual
method of handling this is to set up a levee district, a quasi-
municipal corporation, which deals with the individual
landowners affected. It is feasible to do this because the
levee system would consist of a set of independent struc-
tures. Whether all the local communities will be willing
and financially able to accept the burden remains to be
determined; wherever they fail or refuse, the Interagency
program will fail to furnish localized flood protection. The
maintenance cost of levees was figured at $615 per lineal
mile back in 1945; it would be appreciably higher now. The
sort of thing that the districts must do is mow weeds on
the levees, trim off timber, fill animal burrows, and patch
breaks and washes. Interagency has said that 1,448,000
acres of land in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska
would be protected from floods by the complete levee sys-
tem— but there are differences of opinion among informed

240 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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persons as to the extent of protection. For example, a pub-
lication of the Army Engineers estimated the protected
acreage within Missouri as only about two thirds of the
area stated in an Interagency report.

The levees opposite each other would be set far back
from the banks of the river, averaging 5,000 feet apart be-
low Kansas City, and 3,000 feet apart above it. The effect
would be to create between the levees a floodway with net
area of 1 50,000 acres. This floodway, including some of the
most productive farmland of the region, would be subject
to occasional inundation, as its only protection against
floods would be the partial relief afforded by the upstream
reservoirs. The Missouri Farmers' Association has objected
to this scheme on the ground that it would affect "nearly
half of the fertile Missouri River bottom from one end of
the state to the other." No proposal to indemnify the
owners of the floodway land has been made. The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch reported some time ago: "The Army thinks
that a considerable portion of this farming area would con-
tinue to be as valuable, on the floodway, as it is now, un-
der the threat of intermittent natural flooding, but the
Army recognizes that compensation could be required, if
it were shown there was actual damage resulting from its
plan."

The path for flood protection, in any case, would seem
to be thorny as well as watery. Some persons, for instance,
have questioned whether the plan can have economic justi-
fication when the sites for protective works are priced at
relatively high levels of good bottomland for farming and
the benefits to crops protected are based on government-
support prices for farm products under the celebrated

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 24!

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parity system. By way of illustration, the Army Engineers
asserted in a pamphlet in the early days of the basin pro-
gram that the assumed annual dollar benefits of the reser-
voirs it originally proposed within Missouri would be more
than five times as great as the value of crops from land
permanently withdrawn from cultivation in the reservoir
sites. The University of Missouri's College of Agriculture
countered in a news bulletin with the assertion that these
reservoirs would protect no more land above the Missouri
River mouth than the area of the reservoir sites "essentially
eliminated for agricultural use." This statement did not
take into consideration the fact that average crop value of
the land thus protected probably was greater than average
crop value of the land in the reservoir sites. That kind of
subtle difference, however, tends to make problems in con-
summation of the plan.

The university's comment indirectly reflected a touchy
aspect of the whole flood-control problem. The Interagency
plan is not limited to the Missouri basin in its effects, for
it would help hold back flood waters along the Mississippi,
reaching down into the low "bootheel" corner of south-
eastern Missouri, which to all intents is part of the cotton-
growing, race-conscious South. Some persons in northern
and western Missouri have frankly stated in the past that
they were not interested in having reservoirs taking up
some of their good land to help protect the Mississippi
River bottoms and the people down there.

The program of the Army Engineers for big dams in
Missouri and for one such structure in Kansas has been
stymied, in contrast with the way other projects have
moved along. The Kansas undertaking in question is Tut-

242 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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tie Creek Dam, which would be in the Big Blue River near
Manhattan, where that stream enters the Kansas River.
This job was authorized by Congress in 1938, but there has
been a bitter local controversy about it ever since, and only
some minor planning funds have been appropriated for it.
People of northeastern Kansas quarreled over the location.
The Army Engineers resurveyed the problem and came
back with a recommendation for the original spot and plan
on the ground that they would be cheaper than others and
give more protection, but the objections continued. Mean-
while estimated cost of the job rose from $28,000,000 in
1941 to $68,164,000 in 1949. The purpose is to hold back
flood waters from the Kaw, so that its threat to the valley
all the way to Kansas City and beyond will be lessened.
Now two more Kansas dams are contemplated.

In Missouri, the Army, or Interagency, plan applies to
three important tributaries of the main stem: the Osage
and the Gasconade on the south side, the Grand River on
the north. The original plan for the Osage, authorized by
Congress, provided for Osceola Dam, a big structure on
the Osage, and two lesser dams on branch streams. Inter-
agency was amazed early in 1947 when Phil M. Donnelly,
then Governor of Missouri and an Interagency member,
challenged the Osage plan. He complained that the vital
factors of soil conservation and retardation of water runoff
had been ignored. His forceful attack produced an innova-
tion: Interagency and, more particularly, the Army Engi-
neers backed down from their proposal. General Pick agreed
to a co-operative study by all federal and state agencies con-
cerned. This resurvey took a year, after which it was agreed
to make radical changes in the dam scheme. Instead of

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Osceola Dam and the two smaller dams in Missouri, which
would have had combined storage capacity of 8,170,000
acre-feet, a new set of nine dams was substituted, with an
aggregate capacity of 6,631,000 acre-feet. Four of them
would be in Missouri, five in Kansas; and the largest of the
substitutes would hold only two thirds as much water as
Osceola. The new plan also provided for soil conservation,
reforestation, and other land-use measures. It moved on to
Congress, but so far has not reached the construction stage.
Some of the old arguments persist in the affected area, but
the new plan was generally accepted as suitable.

As a result of the good feeling engendered by this latter-
day Missouri Compromise, a similar co-operative study by
federal and state agencies was undertaken in the Grand
River watershed in 1948, with the same objective of achiev-
ing a better-rounded and less objectionable plan. This time
agreement was delayed and it took three years or more to
get a report from the resurvey group. Congress had au-
thorized the Army Engineers to build one structure, Chilli-
cothe Dam, but complaints from the neighborhood were so
strenuous that the engineers proposed two other dams in
place of it. The general expectation was that the modified
plan would follow a new Army recommendation for seven
dams scattered over five counties of northern Missouri. It
has appeared, however, that trouble would be in store for
this compromise. It contemplated aggregate storage ca-
pacity of 4,760,000 acre-feet for the seven dams, which was
much more than originally proposed for the Chillicothe
project. One of the greatest sources of objections to all
Interagency dams has been the inundation of bottomland
by the reservoirs; the greater the storage capacity, the more

244 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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such inundation. It is likely that the Grand River under-
taking will not be settled for years to come. Meanwhile the
lower Missouri Valley is deprived of the measure of flood
protection that it would provide there.

The Army list provides for two relatively small dams
on the Gasconade River, a picturesque Ozark Mountain
stream. No open controversy has broken out over these, but
the engineers themselves have not been satisfied, and have
been considering for a long time the shifting of the sites.
Little progress has been made about the Gasconade situa-
tion.

Some idea of the importance of the delayed projects for
the Osage, the Grand, and the Gasconade may be gained
from the fact that combined storage capacity of the reser-
voirs in these three sub-basins would be more than one half
that of the huge Garrison Dam in North Dakota.

While opponents of "high dams" complain about the
loss of useful bottomland for the resultant big reservoirs,
the Army Engineers patiently point out that the bigger the
reservoir, the less ground it will cover per acre-foot of water
impounded. In other words, it would be more wasteful of
land to split the storage into many smaller reservoirs than
to concentrate it in larger ones. The stock answer of the
objectors is that it would not be necessary to store so much
water and provide for silt accumulation if adequate steps
were taken to hold the water and the soil in their proper
places on the basin's whole terrain. They are right, up to a
point: silt and water storage could be reduced by compre-
hensive conservation measures, but such measures would
not even approach doing the whole job. Furthermore, if
the dams were eliminated, power production, irrigation, do-

XII. PROBLEMS IN PROFUSION 245

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mestic water supply, and whatever hopes there are for im-
proved navigation flows would be knocked out.

AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM

Conservation of the soil, retardation of water runoff, and
abatement of silt in the comprehensive fashion desired, all
depend on the ambitious, accelerated program of the De-
partment of Agriculture for the Missouri valley. This pro-
gram, in turn, depends in the first instance on approval by
Congress. Secretary Brannan transmitted it to Congress on
September 29, 1949, and there it has languished without
public hearings in the field being set. So far it has met
about the same fate as that other celebrated Brannan Plan
for a new nation-wide system of farm subsidies, except that
the Secretary's Missouri basin proposal has found favor
with representatives of the area affected and has received
only one brickbat publicly. The Interagency committee has
acted formally to approve the program, which is tanta-
mount to acceptance in principle by the states of the re-
gion. The plan has at least the implied backing of the
Missouri River States Committee. Unless there is vigorous
support of the scheme at Washington by the region's gov-
ernors and congressional delegations, however, it is not
likely to get either authorization, the first step, or appro-
priations, the showdown step. With the fate of the world
in the balance, there has been an understandable reluc-
tance to press very hard for the agricultural program. Na-
tional defense comes first, but in the long-range sense the
national defense might be promoted by conservation in
this broad region.

246 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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One of the ticklish facts involved is that most of the
basin states are Republican, while Congress and the na-
tional administration are Democratic. As a result, the feel-
ing of the governors' committee has been that the spokes-
men of this committee might not be too well received, but
the narrowed margin of Democratic majority in Congress
might alleviate this concern.

The sole public criticism of the agricultural program
came from the Department of the Interior, a partner of the
Department of Agriculture in Interagency. Former Secre-
tary of the Interior Julius A. Krug attacked the plan for a
wide variety of reasons in a public letter to Secretary Bran-
nan. In some respects Mr. Krug's stand reflected concern
over the volume of water available for irrigation if the con-
servation measures were adopted. The dispute was quieted,
if not dissipated, when Oscar L. Chapman succeeded to the
Interior secretaryship. Questions of jurisdiction had been
raised, however, which quite possibly will come up again if
Congress digs into the matter. In contrast, responsible
Army officials have publicly approved the agricultural plan
and have expressed satisfaction over this addition to the
general Interagency plan. The Federal Power Commission
has commented that a material reduction in siltation of the
Missouri River not only would facilitate navigation but
would make possible an entirely new scheme for hydro-
electric plants with large power output in the stretch be-
tween Gavins Point Dam, in South Dakota, and the mouth
of the Missouri.

The huge cost of the agricultural program, both to the
federal treasury and to the landowners, farmers, and ranch-
ers of the basin surely will present a stumbling-block. If

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the plan is to work, the federal purse strings must be loos-
ened with a hard yank and the private interests must be
treated with overwhelming persuasiveness. Rough calcula-
tions indicate that the private expenditure might eventually
average more than $8,600 per farm, or a figure approaching
$19 per acre on the basis of the original cost estimates.

Other problems that may give the program hard going
include the complexity of the scheme and the bold scale
on which it is pitched; the possibility of jealousy on the
part of other watersheds for which no such undertaking has
been proposed; and the overlapping of soil-conservation
work by separate and seemingly rival bureaus of the De-
partment of Agriculture, notably the Soil Conservation
Service and the Production and Marketing Administration.

SOIL EROSION AND SILTATION

The problem of the washing away of the soil — which makes
the silt that clogs the rivers — is intimately related to the
agricultural program for this region. Without question,
good topsoil has been dispersed at an alarming rate by ac-
tion of water and of wind in many large areas. Disagree-
ment has developed, however, as to the source of the soil
that finds its way into the Missouri River. A common view
has been that the soil washes from the land and into the
rivers, but Department of Agriculture specialists deny that
all the eroded soil finds its way into the streams. Mr. Sloan
has gone much farther, espousing a theory claiming, in ef-
fect, that the silt in the rivers comes largely from the stream
beds themselves, rather than from the lands of the water-
shed. He has argued that much of this erosion can be pin-

248 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

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pointed to small areas, such as the classic example of the
bed of Five Mile Creek in west-central Wyoming, between
the Wind River Range and the Owl Creek Mountains.
Earth from Five Mile Creek presumably goes through the
Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Missouri rivers. The Sloan
argument notes that such movement of silt in geologic
time was the source of the fertile bottomlands along the
Missouri and the Mississippi, from Yankton, South Da-
kota, to New Orleans. Much more factual information is
needed to form a basis of sound judgment in determining
what to do about the silt. The silt comes also from such
streams as the Little Missouri, Cheyenne, Bad, White,
Platte, Kansas, and Grand.

General Sturgis has said: "Garrison Dam will be re-
quired to store the tremendous silt load of the Yellowstone
River, largest contributor of silt in the Missouri basin."
Twenty-one per cent of the storage capacity of the Garrison
Reservoir, or 4,900,000 acre-feet, will be dead storage —
space where silt can pile up. At recent price levels this space
represents more than $43,000,000 of the cost of the project.

Interagency has been told by Mr. Sloan about findings
of sediment sampling stations in the ten-year period of
1938-47. Omaha is the station farthest downstream. The
average annual silt load in the Missouri River at Omaha
in that decade was 154,760,000 tons, with a range from
82,670,000 tons in 1939 to 243,880,000 tons in 1944. The
calculations showed that the average represented a loss of
soil over the entire watershed above Omaha amounting to
only two thirds of an inch in depth of soil in a century.
Mr. Sloan conceded that this manner of averaging the soil
loss did not "present a true picture/' as the actual loss

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might be much worse in some areas than in others. He
then moved on to expound his theory of pinpointing the
critical erosion spots. He told Interagency that the amount
of soil erosion could be measured by the volume of sus-
pended sediment in the rivers. This view was challenged
immediately by Chairman Young and by a Forest Service
biologist. Mr. Young, in implied defense of the agricul-
tural conservation program, said that the question raised
by the Sloan paper was "the degree of control man can
give" soil erosion. The conclusion would seem to be in-
escapable that man has quite a job cut out for himself in
his undertaking to desilt rivers and hold topsoil in place.

An ironic incidental is the fact that the Army Engineers
rely heavily on the silt in their system for regimenting the
Missouri River. It is silt that is caught by the rows of tim-
ber piles to form new land where the engineers wish to
change the course of the water.

No thorough data are available as to the amount of top-
soil that has been lost from the lands of the Missouri
watershed by erosion. This loss has been taking place more
or less continuously during geologic time; it has been far
worse in some areas than in others. Erosion by water natu-
rally has been greatest in the eastern part of the basin,
where the rainfall is heaviest. Wind erosion has been most
severe on the plains, particularly in the droughts of the
1930*8. Federal studies at several selected stations, notably
in southwestern Iowa and northwestern Missouri, have
yielded definitive information on water erosion. The find-
ings showed clearly that soil-conservation measures and
crop rotation helped hold the topsoil in place. In contrast,
planting of corn year after year resulted in loss of as much

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as three and one half inches of topsoil from a relatively
gentle slope in the course of a decade.

The Department of Agriculture insists that positive
proof exists that erosion can be controlled effectively un-
der practical farming conditions. Much progress has been
made since the middle 1930'$ in spreading the gospel of
soil control through the Department's Soil Conservation
Service and Production and Marketing Administration,
with the co-operation of the state agricultural colleges and
extension services and of farm organizations. Nevertheless,
an appalling amount of work remains to be done to bring
soil conservation in this region somewhere near universal
application. One of the difficulties is that the rate of ero-
sion tends to accelerate rapidly once the soil begins to wash
or blow away without hindrance.

One of the refreshing things about Interagency's ac-
tivity has been that it has served to let new ideas come out.
For example, the committee has been told that time-
honored American ideas about landownership must be
changed in order to help save the soil. This advice came,
not from a political radical, but from Clyde Spry, assistant
secretary of agriculture in the Republican state administra-
tion of Iowa. He said: "We will have to change the con-
ception that the ownership of land gives the owner the
right to do as he pleases with the land. We must do some-
thing to change the thinking of those who own and those
who occupy land so they will consider themselves stewards
or trustees of the land. The motto of the National Asso-
ciation of Soil Conservation Districts is: 'With the right to
own goes the duty to conserve/ '

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ELECTRIC POWER

Who owns the tremendous power latent in running water?
Is this a natural resource belonging to all the people, or is
it something to be exploited for private profit? Shall the
federal government, which is harnessing this power in the
rivers of the Missouri basin, transmit the current to the
areas that need it and direct the distribution through pub-
lic and semi-public channels, or shall it turn the output
over to the private utilities at the dams? These questions
typify a great and fundamental struggle going on in this
region, just as it is raging in other parts of the country. It is
the issue of Public Power vs. Private Power. The well-
financed and aggressive lobby for private power shouts
"Socialism!" about public power, and political and eco-
nomic conservatives inveigh against this "invasion" of busi-
ness by government. Nevertheless, many persons who are
not radicals or even socialists or Fair Dealers think that it
makes sense for Uncle Sam to handle the power in the
rivers as a resource of the nation.

Federal laws require that preference in sale of publicly
generated power be given to public distributing systems such
as numerous municipalities have, or to public power dis-
tricts, or to rural electric co-operatives. When private power
realized that it could not stop construction of the public
generating facilities in the basin, it turned to the theme of
private control of the output all the way from the public
source to the consumer. It proposed to contract for the cur-
rent supply, arguing that this would prevent wasteful dupli-
cation of costly transmission lines. The catch is that small

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cities and some rural co-ops cannot afford to build long,
costly transmission lines to bring power from the dams to
their customers. If the public power-supply system cannot
build transmission lines to reach these little distributors,
or make satisfactory arrangements to move power over
privately owned utility lines, the small towns and co-ops
are deprived of needed current. There has been much snip-
ing and open fighting against Interagency's public power.
One of the most bitter and determined attacks of private
power on public power was an unsuccessful effort by the
Montana Power Company to prevent the Bureau of Rec-
lamation from building a power-generating station as part
of its Canyon Ferry Dam, being erected near Helena, Mon-
tana. This attack was successful at first, but was defeated
before it could cause serious interference with the project.
Already in existence is a public power grid that has
reached many sections of the country, including large strips
of the Missouri basin, and is growing. Some public officials
familiar with it say in personal conversations that the de-
mand for more power is so great that a national public
power grid appears to be in the making. There are regional
interconnections, and a few years ago the consumption of
electricity in the Pacific Northwest was so large that the
machines were overloaded and electric clocks in the Da-
kotas ran slow. The Department of the Interior is desig-
nated by law as the marketing agency for federal power; it
delegates this function to different subsidiaries in different
regions, the Bureau of Reclamation being the marketer in
the Missouri watershed. Some critics within governmental
circles assert that the bureau is putting undue emphasis on
its power assignment and is encouraging aggrandizement

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of the system. This view overlooks the generally accepted
fact that more power is needed and would help the region.

As the power-producing facilities grow and the market
is expanded, there will be a vital need for steam plants to
assure a constant flow of current. The hydro plants will not
have water for full-time operation. Already the lines are laid
for a fight between public and private power over the steam
plants. Who shall build them — the government or private
industry? Such a fight was won by public power in the
TVA country, after a bitter controversy, when Congress
authorized a Tennessee Valley Authority steam plant at
New Johnsonville, Tennessee. It was disclosed several years
ago that the Department of the Interior was considering
addition of public steam plants in the Missouri basin. The
talk was soft-pedaled after that. When Assistant Secretary
of the Interior William E. Warne appeared at an Inter-
agency meeting late in 1950, he discussed with newspaper
reporters the desirability of more power for national de-
fense. He pointed out that steam plants could be erected
faster, though at greater cost, than hydro plants. He was
then asked if the Interagency program contemplated con-
struction of steam plants. His succinct reply was: "Not by
the federal government." The next question was whether
the government might make loans to private industry for
these plants. His guarded response was to the effect that
this might be "one way," but he added that he was not pre-
pared to go into details. The personal conclusion of the re-
porters was that the Department feared to enter the field of
steam plants, but later it showed new interest.

Some of the public power of the basin already is going
to private utilities, in some instances because there is either

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no means of delivering it to other distributors or not
enough consumption handled by available public distribu-
tors. The Bureau of Reclamation also has in some areas
"wheeling contracts" whereby transmission lines of private
utilities are employed to relay power to public or co-op
distributors. When such an agreement was made recently
with the Montana Power Company to carry current from
Canyon Ferry Dam to Great Falls, Montana, Secretary
Chapman said this avoidance of duplicating lines would
save five hundred tons of aluminum cable and other criti-
cal materials. Some skeptics cannot refrain from wondering
whether the wheeling contracts may not prove to be enter-
ing wedges for private power to manipulate public power
handling.

The marketing of the public power began to be a head-
ache to the Department long before the big new hydro
plants approached readiness. Policies have been set up only
to be altered or scrapped. The biggest supply will be gen-
erated at the dams in the Dakotas, but Nebraska, the only
state in the nation served entirely by public power districts,
has been in line to get much of the output. The situation
forced South Dakota, apparently somewhat against its will,
to adopt an enabling statute for public power districts,
though the measure was criticized as lacking sufficient
strength. North Dakota may yet find a similar step ad-
visable. The talk has been of assurance that each state will
receive its "fair share" of the power. Intense interest was
aroused in the public and in the state administrations when
the early debates were at their height. The issue is by no
means fully settled yet.

A persistent question has been whether the Interagency

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program was going far enough in its provision for electric
power. Early estimates, when it was still the Pick-Sloan
plan, were that generating capacity to be installed in the
basin-wide system would be 2,000,000 kilowatts, annual pro-
duction 10,000,000,000 kilowatt hours.

The significance of these terms, "kilowatt" and "kilo-
watt hour," and of the staggering figures by which they are
measured in this program, can be better understood with a
brief explanation. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts; a watt is the
basic unit of power capability as set by an old formula.
Capacity expressed in kilowatts means simply the energy of
electricity that can be generated at any given instant. A
kilowatt hour is the use or "consumption" of the generat-
ing capacity of one kilowatt for a period of 60 minutes.
Now, an electric bulb in common use in homes is rated at
60 watts: in an hour it burns 60 watts, and it consumes
exactly one kilowatt hour of supply in 16 hours and 40
minutes of steady burning. Translate this in terms of the
original Pick-Sloan power estimates stated above: that gen-
erating capacity of 2,000,000 kilowatts would be capable of
lighting simultaneously 33,333,333 of your 6o-watt bulbs;
that annual production of 10,000,000,000 kilowatt hours
would keep more than 19,000,000 such bulbs lighted con-
tinuously for a year. Production never calls for the full use
of generating capacity every hour of the year; people do not
use electricity that way.

Critics asserted when Pick-Sloan was new that the basin
was capable of an output of perhaps 18,000,000,000 kilo-
watt hours per year. Then, early in 1947, liiteragency suf-
fered a shock when Lester C. Walker, a Federal Power
Commission engineer, delivering a report he had been in-

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structed to make, declared that the plan actually provided
for only 1,600,000 kilowatts of capacity and 8,000,000,000
kilowatt hours in annual production. That was not all. He
added: "We consider 5,000,000 kilowatts capacity, with an
average annual potential generation of 25,000,000,000 kilo-
watt hours, a somewhat conservative estimate of the total
potential hydroelectric power of the basin." The conflict of
big figures went on when Chairman Nelson Lee Smith of
FPC commented on the agricultural program for the basin.
Mr. Smith asserted that a material reduction of silt in the
Missouri River might make possible additional power plants
in the lower river — not now part of the Interagency plan —
which would turn out 12,500,000,000 kilowatt hours per
year.

Ben Greene, FPC's Interagency member, warned the
committee late in 1949 that by 1970 the provisions then
existing would fall far short of meeting the basin's demand
for power. By that time, he declared, the region will require
dependable generating capacity of 9,673,000 kilowatts, of
which only 2,026,000 kilowatts would be derived from
Interagency' s hydro plants and 3,725,000 kilowatts from
private utilities and various non-federal public plants. The
big deficiency of 3,922,000 kilowatts would have to come
from new sources. Mr. Greene mentioned as possible
sources steam- or diesel-operated generating plants or atomic
energy, which last is looming larger as a potential source of
power. The need for power is recognized by Interagency,
and the fact that its intentions regarding power have been
expanded repeatedly has been a hopeful sign. By the spring
of 1950 it had been agreed among FPC engineers, the Army
Engineers, and the Bureau of Reclamation that Inter-

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agency plants completed or under construction, plus oth-
ers under tentative consideration, would have capacity of
3,191,000 kilowatts and ultimate annual average output of
13,750,000,000 kilowatt hours. Meanwhile the states and
their governors are spurring the movement for more and
more electric power. Among the outspoken governors on
this subject are Peterson of Nebraska and Bonner of Mon-
tana, ably abetted in the past by former Governors Mickel-
son of South Dakota and Aandahl of North Dakota. Inter-
agency has undertaken an exhaustive study of the question.

The possibility of low dams to provide slack-water navi-
gation from the mouth of the Missouri to Yankton, South
Dakota, has been suggested by the President's Water Re-
sources Policy Commission. The commission said this
would furnish an additional 2,200,000 kilowatts of electric
capacity.

This assertion by the policy commission was part of a
"tentative list of hydro-electric power possibilities other
than at projects under construction, authorized, and rec-
ommended or contemplated." The list, dealing with nu-
merous large and small streams scattered throughout the
Missouri basin, showed a total of 5,733,450 kilowatts of
possible generating capacity, in addition to the Interagency
plan, but including the 2,200,000 kilowatts mentioned in
connection with downstream navigation. The commission
said that the average annual generation from this additional
potential power could be 29,209,545,000 kilowatt hours. If
it should prove to be possible and feasible to add to the
present Interagency plan all the power thus suggested by
the commission, the total capacity would be increased to
8,924,000 kilowatts. It can readily be seen that here the

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commission opened up a delicate and highly important
question. This showing is virtually certain to raise sooner
or later the issue of whether the Interagency plan is going
anything like far enough in its power aspect.

INTERNATIONAL WATERS

Plans of the Bureau of Reclamation call for a diversion of
water from St. Mary Lakes, in Glacier National Park, to
irrigate land along the Milk River in Montana. The lakes
normally drain into a Canadian river of the same name,
which is in the Hudson Bay watershed, while the Milk is a
tributary of the Missouri. The project, a relatively minor
one, is described by the bureau thus: "The irrigation plan
of the Milk River project provides for the storage of St.
Mary water in the Sherburne Lakes reservoir and its diver-
sion through a canal 29 miles long, heading three fourths
of a mile below Lower St. Mary Lake and discharging into
the north fork of Milk River, thence flowing through Can-
ada for 216 miles before returning to the United States."
An international treaty dealing with the waters of the two
streams was signed in 1909, but there has recently been
considerable dispute about other streams in the vicinity,
just beyond the Missouri basin, and an international joint
commission has been investigating. The implications of in-
ternational difficulty here are even greater than the trouble-
some and highly controverted questions of states' rights in
water that are encountered throughout the western part of
the basin.

[ 259 ]

<3*><><><3x£O<>^x><><3K><>^

CHAPTER XIII

MVA: Hope or Bugaboo of the Basin?

A VAST amount of bunk and baloney has been spoken and
written about the long-standing proposal for a Missouri
Valley Authority — the MVA. Mostly this has come from
its opponents and detractors, but occasionally its more en-
thusiastic backers have gone a bit overboard in their claims
for it. MVA has been attacked as a piece of rank socialism,
a totalitarian supergovernment, a raw attempt at nationali-
zation of the proper spheres of private enterprise, a threat
to states' rights, a prime example of the evil machinations
of the Rooseveltian New Deal. Perhaps some orators may
have gone so far as to link it with the asserted horrors of
the Trumanic Fair Deal, but there would not be much
point to that, as the record indicates plainly that President
Truman has scarcely given MVA a pious morsel of lip serv-
ice. On the other side of the shield, MVA has been upheld
as a fine, practical application of democracy in action, a
means of regional home rule, a saver of public money, a
conservator of priceless natural resources, the exact oppo-
site of ruthless, entrenched national bureaucracy, and the
logical outcome of the successful Tennessee Valley Au-
thority precedent.

Out of this welter of fact and fancy has grown a sharp
controversy. The issue has been forced to be, in effect, not
whether the present form of basin management should be

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changed for the new one proposed in MVA, but a basic
conflict of politico-economic philosophy: Liberalism vs.
Conservatism. The fact is that the essential difference be-
tween MVA and the existing Interagency system is one of
administration or management. Under MVA there would
be a single, unified management, whereas Interagency is a
voluntary confederation of independent departments hav-
ing separate and even conflicting responsibilities. While
physical plans might be changed if MVA were to take over,
such change would amount to application of the unified
administration.

One persistent argument has been that TVA may be all
very well for the compact, homogeneous countryside of the
Tennessee Valley, but that its virtual counterpart, MVA,
never could work in the far-flung, heterogeneous Missouri
Valley. This argument does not hold much water: man-
agement principles could be applied regardless of the geo-
graphical variations within a region. The growing realiza-
tion of the unity of river valleys and of the propriety of
planning and developing uniformly throughout a major
watershed has served to help knock out this argument. A
key step for an MVA was a long editorial, "One River —
One Problem," in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of May 14,
1944.

The late George Norris worked from 1918 to 1933 to
make TVA a reality. He had the powerful backing of Presi-
dent Roosevelt. F. D. R. was on record also for MVA, and
told Congress, when the Pick-Sloan plan was made law,
that he did not desire this to interfere with the eventual
realization of MVA. Meanwhile, Mr. Truman, as Vice
President, was accused by MVA supporters of referring the

xm. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 261

<>00<*cX^O<><X>^^

second MVA bill to hostile senatorial committees. That
was in 1945. A succession of bills followed but languished,
the fourth one being introduced in 1949. Sponsors pro-
posed to try again in the Eighty-second Congress, convened
in 1951, but with no actual hope of success in that session.
They did not hurry, considering the introduction only a
gesture, at least for the current session. Their idea was that
any time before the session ends late in 1952 would be soon
enough, but that they might act before the close of 1951.

Senator Murray of Montana, a Democrat and a liberal,
has been the chief congressional backer of MVA. He intro-
duced the earlier bills and, for a time, made strenuous
efforts to push them through. Unable to obtain official
congressional hearings in the basin, he conducted a set of
informal hearings of his own in Montana in 1947. He is
independently wealthy, and his whole background stamps
him as anything but a radical, though he has backed labor
measures and the Fair Deal scheme for medical care. For
the 1949 bill he was joined as author by fifteen other sena-
tors, including Senator Langer of North Dakota, a Republi-
can, and such Senate leaders as John J. Sparkman of Ala-
bama and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, both Democrats.
Also among the sponsors taking a leading part with Sena-
tor Murray were Senator Humphrey, the fiery ex-mayor of
Minneapolis, and Senator Guy M. Gillette of Iowa. MVA
has not had too many congressional friends: among them,
however, have been the late Representative John J. Cochran
of St. Louis, a power on the Democratic side, and his suc-
cessor, Frank M. Karsten, also a Democrat.

Addressing the Senate as the 1949 bill was introduced,
Senator Murray said of the Missouri Valley: "Not only is

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this great river basin our last remaining untapped reservoir
of raw resources needed for defense, but its potentialities
for the development of vast amounts of essential civilian
products are so great as to offer a new economic frontier
for the use of our capital, our unused manpower, and the
utilization of our genius as optimistic, enterprising Ameri-

cans."

Continuing, the Montanan said that he and Senators
Humphrey and Gillette had visited President Truman a
short time previously "and found him enthusiastically sup-
porting this most beneficial legislation." He added that
policy-making officials of both the Department of the In-
terior and the Department of Agriculture were on record in
favor of MVA. (Neither department actually has made any
positive effort to bring about creation of MVA, however,
but the Bureau of the Budget has shown a friendly stand,
and has said that the general objectives would not be in
conflict with the President's program.)

Some MVA backers talked of changing the last part of
the title from "Authority" to "Agency" because of the bad
repute of the authoritarian idea. At one point Senator Mur-
ray switched the title, but then changed it back to the origi-
nal because some supporters feared that the belief might
arise that there was some retreat from the original concept.
The 1949 form of the bill represents the MVA idea well,
having embodied some refinements to meet criticisms of
earlier drafts. Thereafter there was talk of some further
change to qualify the proposal as a governmental reorgani-
zation bill, with the hope this might help steer it to friendly
committees. Meanwhile other demands on Senator Murray,

xiu. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 263

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notably his appointment as chairman of the Senate's im-
portant Labor and Public Welfare Committee, tended to
hamper his support of MVA.

Senator Murray's speech on presenting the 1949 bill
included a synopsis of its provisions, which may be further
condensed as follows:

Headquarters and branch offices of MVA would be within
the region. Management would be vested in a board of five
directors, at least three of them residents of the Missouri basin
for at least five years. They would employ a general manager.

The first duty of MVA would be to prepare a comprehen-
sive plan for unified development of the region in keeping with
policies laid down in the bill. The plan would require congres-
sional approval before funds would be provided or construction
work begun. Prior approval of the plan would be required from
an advisory board. Members of this board would be twelve
citizens representing interests of agriculture, commerce and
industry, labor, and wildlife and recreation; also the principal
officer of each of the federal departments of Agriculture, In-
terior, Commerce, Justice, Army, and Labor, and of the Federal
Power Commission and the board of governors of the Federal
Reserve Bank; also the governors of the ten Missouri basin
states. These governors, in addition, would form a special ad-
visory committee on federal-state relationships.

Projects for which authorizations and appropriations were
provided prior to MVA would not be delayed or dropped, as
they would have to be incorporated into the MVA plan. [Thus
the further the Interagency program proceeds in construction,
the less likelihood of any material change in the basin plan
should MVA be adopted.]

Interests of the respective states in their watersheds and
their water rights would be protected under the bill, which
"recognizes the existence of an important body of law affecting
the public lands, irrigation, reclamation, grazing, geological

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survey, national parks and monuments, mines and mineral
holdings, and forest land that must not be affected in any man-
ner."

Existing governmental agencies would be drawn upon to
assist in MVA undertakings through contracts providing for
them to handle projects for which they are especially qualified.
[Thus the Army Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the
Department of Agriculture might be left handling much the
same functions already assigned them, but subject to the unified
management of a single, over-all administrative agency.] State
and local agencies might also be called on to assist in MVA's
work.

The rule of the O'Mahoney-Millikin amendment to the
Flood Control Act of 1944 would be preserved, giving the upper
basin prior claim to use of water for irrigation and other con-
sumptive purposes. The idea of the family-size farm, basically
160 acres, would be followed in the allowance of water for irriga-
tion.

Electric power could be sold by MVA only at wholesale,
except that retail sales could be made to farms and rural com-
munities "not adequately served by existing utilities at reason-
able rates."

All funds for MVA would have to be provided by Con-
gress, and profits from operations would go to the federal treas-
ury, so that direct appropriations would have to be made by
Congress for all construction.

Payments to state and local governments in lieu of taxes,
at least equal to the ordinary yield of property taxation, would
be made by MVA on its holdings. The anticipated effect would
be to increase income of state and local governments as values
rose under the impetus of improvements.

Thus ran the descriptive account of the MVA proposal
given by Senator Murray to his colleagues. The 1949 ver-
sion of the bill gave increased strength to the provisions for
representation of the states and for protecting rights of the

xiii. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 265

<^><^t><><^>^<><-><>^^

states. It also increased the number of MVA directors from
three to five, to be appointed by the President with the ad-
vice and consent of the Senate, and with presidential desig-
nation of the chairman. MVA would be in the realm of
wholly government-owned corporations.

What does the other side of the dike have to say about
this proposition? One of the strongest pressure groups in-
terested is the Mississippi Valley Association, with head-
quarters in St. Louis. It was started largely to promote
navigation on the Mississippi many years ago, and in later
years has spread its interest to general questions in both the
Mississippi and the Missouri valleys. Its Mississippi Valley
News Letter for March 1949 had this to say about the Mur-
ray bill for MVA:

"The new bill goes far beyond the provisions proposed
in the previous MVA measures. The- new powers sought
would establish precedents which would profoundly affect
the form of government under which this country has
prospered for nearly two centuries. The broad grants of au-
thority which are sought in the bill exceed the powers given
to the Tennessee Valley Authority. In most incidences
[sic], these powers would establish precedents of serious
import to the nation. The bill, for example, confers upon
the Authority to be created broad powers of eminent do-
main. ... It can logically be construed . . . that the Au-
thority has the legal right to condemn and sell any land or
property in the Missouri basin on the sole ground that the
profits would be used in the furtherance of its plans. . . .

"If adopted, the Murray bill would establish the prece-
dent that the federal government should nationalize the
electric power industry. The bill specifically grants to the

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Authority the right to 'build and operate' steam electric
generating plants. This is the right now sought by TVA in
its request for money to build a steam plant at New John-
sonville, Tennessee. [Note: Congress later gave TVA that
right.] In both instances, once the precedent is established,
the door is open for the nationalization, not only of electric
power, but of all public utilities.

"The bill seeks complete independence for the Au-
thority. It would specifically free MVA from all restrictions
relating to the control of the waters of the Missouri flowing
into the Mississippi. This basin independence does not ap-
ply to TVA. . . .

"While the title of the bill stresses 'water control and
resources development/ it is significant that the measure is
so worded that its provisions may be construed to give the
Authority control over all resources of the Missouri basin,
including minerals. This is another instance in which the
powers proposed exceed those given TVA. In fact, as law-
yers who have studied it point out, it is seldom that in its
provisions it can be said that the powers of the Authority
go so far and no further. In at least 27 instances the grants
of power are limited only by the phrase as the Authority
'deems necessary/ . . .

"It is reasonable to assume that Congress would be
asked to decide upon a relatively general plan, which would
give the Authority carte blanche insofar as the details are
concerned. This interpretation is supported by the broad
powers to be granted the Authority in other sections of the
bill."

There you have it: advocates of MVA say it would give

xiii. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 267

<xX><><><><><X><X><>^

a reasonable, economical, and democratic management for
the benefit of the people, doing away with existing bureau-
cratic conflicts; enemies insist it would be an unreasonable,
wasteful imposition, socialistic or worse. Supporters declare
that MVA would be fully controlled by Congress; oppo-
nents argue that existing procedures of checks and inquiries
would be ditched, once Congress voted funds. Like most
things in this world, this conflict is neither all white nor all
black; there are grays, overtones, shadows. Objective con-
sideration may very well lead to the conclusion that MVA
would offer desirable improvements in the situation, but
that the proposal might properly be subject to reasonable
limitations. There is no reason, for instance, why the powers
should not be so sharply defined as to eliminate criticisms.
Some of these criticisms seem pretty far-fetched, yet there
is no point in leaving in the proposal uncertainties that
might conceivably open the way to radical action. After
all, Congress, like the Almighty, can take away as well as
give; an MVA statute could be repealed or amended to
meet the will of the people. The Tennessee Valley Au-
thority has operated successfully for almost two decades
with widespread support among the people of its region,
and there has been no occasion for Congress to trim TVA's
powers.

Who is for MVA? Notable supporters have included
the following:

The Congress of Industrial Organizations, nationally and
regionally.

The American Federation of Labor's national executive
council.

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Construction trades of the American Federation of Labor,
especially in the region affected.

The National Farmers' Union, which is strong in western
states of the basin.

The Missouri Farmers7 Association, by far the largest agrar-
ian group in its state and perhaps in the region; it is generally
conservative in character.

The strong, persistent editorial voice of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch.

The membership of the vigorous and usually conservative
St. Louis Chamber of Commerce as expressed by a slim majority
in a specific poll, the result of which was not set aside in spite
of strenuous efforts by opponents.

The Democratic Midwest Conference, which met at Des
Moines, Iowa, in 1949, as expressed by a mild resolution adopted
over some opposition.

The weak Progressive (Wallace) Party of Missouri, in its
1948 platform.

Reasons for the support of MVA by this divergent set
of forces coincide with virtually no exception. All of the
supporters arrived at the same conclusions by independent
action. Their reasons can be summarized as follows:

They feel that MVA could do a more efficient and success-
ful job than Interagency in flood control, power production, soil
conservation, irrigation, and the other basic needs of the valley.

They hope that MVA may evolve a plan that would re-
duce the size of the big reservoirs and take less bottomland out
of cultivation.

They are convinced that MVA would serve better than
Interagency to provide more jobs, more and cheaper electric
power, more food, more industrial development, a better chance
for national defense plants to move in, improved regional mar-
kets, and higher living standards.

XIII. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 269

<><><X>0C><£<><><><*^

They maintain that MVA could be expected to protect
and exploit natural resources for the benefit of the whole public
in more whole-hearted fashion than existing agencies.

They have found that TVA has enjoyed an excellent
record of labor relations, and they believe MVA would duplicate
this.

In fine, they are moved by a spirit of social and economic
consciousness.

Who opposes MVA? This list is virtually equivalent to
that of the supporters of the present Interagency method.
It includes:

Many of the major privately owned electric utilities, acting
in concert in their national advertising, and some utilities acting
individually in the Missouri basin. The costly national advertis-
ing by the group describes these utilities as "America's business-
managed, taxpaying electric light and power companies."

The National Reclamation Association, the pressure group
of irrigation interests.

The Mississippi Valley Association, interested primarily
in navigation and flood control in the lower Missouri River and
the Mississippi, and in soil conservation.

The Chamber of Commerce of the United States, which
is regarded as a leading spokesman for big business.

The National Rivers and Harbors Congress, a powerful
lobby for the Army Engineers.

Heavy-construction contractors, particularly through their
national organization, the Associated General Contractors, and
its state branches.

The Missouri Farm Bureau Federation, a unit of the right-
wing national federation.

Railroads of the region, at least indirectly; they do not
speak out openly on the issue, but their sympathy with Inter-
agency has been made evident.

2yO THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><><><><^o<x^<^e<£^^

The Kansas City Star, the Omaha World-Herald, the St.
Louis Globe-Democrat, and various lesser newspapers, all with
Republican or conservative leanings.

Representatives of some livestock, lumber, and oil inter-
ests.

Miscellaneous groups that like the present method of
dealing with flood control and navigation.

State administrations of most, if not all, of the basin states.
Montana's administration comes fairly close to favoring the
MVA side, but actually stops short of that and instead supports
Interagency. Missouri, often showing doubts about Interagency,
nevertheless is tacitly against MVA. Strongest in support of
Interagency and therefore against MVA are Nebraska, North
Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, and Colorado.

Like the supporters of MVA, the opponents all have
pretty much the same sets of reasons for their stand. Their
objections to MVA can be summarized as follows:

MVA would be a new and objectionable "supergovern-
ment," with autocratic authority.

It would threaten the sovereignty of the states and en-
croach on their jurisdictions.

It would be a new step toward socialism, a surrender of
democratic rights and checks.

It would put the government into business more than
ever— especially the power business.

It would disrupt established and time-tried methods of
operation and interfere with accepted methods of financing and
of dealing with Congress and federal departments.

The region is accustomed to dealing with the existing
agencies and does not want to upset the mutual understanding
with them.

Special interests have special reasons for opposing MVA:
for example, the contractors fear that MVA would not deal with
them; the railroads oppose river navigation; the power com-

15. Casper, Wyoming, in the heart of the oil country.

Ken, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION OF

CENTRAL WYOMING.

XIII. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 2J1

&>*><>>&&&Z><&&<^^

panics want to keep the electric business in their hands; some
grazing, lumber, and oil interests fear MVA might interfere
with their pursuits.

In short, the opponents of MVA prefer the status quo.

Organized support for MVA was concentrated in the
Regional Committee for the Missouri Valley Authority, a
lively pressure group in the mid-i 940*8, since moribund
and now virtually defunct. Proponents gathered under its
auspices because it was a centralized movement with en-
thusiastic backing. Its main drive came from the National
Farmers' Union, the CIO, and the AFL construction
trades. Among persons it attracted were economic and
political liberals. Philip Murray, head of the CIO, was par-
ticularly outspoken and active in support of MVA, and
the CIO was a principal source of funds for the organiza-
tion. William Green, head of the AFL, also came out pub-
licly for MVA. As last announced, about 1947, officers of
the Regional Committee for the Missouri Valley Authority
were: chairman, Benton J. Stong, now a Washington repre-
sentative of the National Farmers' Union; vice-presidents,
Al F. Kojetinsky, St. Louis, district director of the CIO
United Steel Workers, and J. O. Mack, president of the
AFL Carpenters' District Council of Kansas City and Vi-
cinity; secretary-treasurer, John E. Wetzig, Kansas City,
an international representative of the AFL International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; working committee
members, Jerome G. Locke, Helena, Montana, a civil engi-
neer; Leroy Sabie, Pipestone, Minnesota, manager of an
REA co-operative; and James A. Davis, St. Louis, executive
secretary of the CIO Missouri Industrial Union Council.
Activities of the regional committee folded up when con-

272 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<>O3*Xx£<>O<><><>«><^

tributors quit contributing as the outlook for MVA in Con-
gress seemed to grow dimmer.

The nearest to a centralized organization of the MVA
opposition is the Missouri Valley Development Associa-
tion. Its executive director and guiding spirit is John B.
Quinn, of Lincoln, Nebraska, an ebullient and irrepressible
man. He is a public-relations counselor, operator of an au-
tomobile insurance agency, and farmer, who also has con-
ducted political campaigns for Republican office-seekers
and campaigns on public questions. From time to time he
has said that he has telegraphed articles about Interagency
meetings to the Denver Post, Omaha World-Herald, and
newspapers at Hastings and Alliance, Nebraska. Mr. Quinn
says that his organization is supported by contractors, farm-
ers, ranchers, chambers of commerce, and others — but not
by electric utilities or railroads. He says that the electric
utilities cannot be counted on as supporters of Interagency.
Mr. Quinn has been on good terms with officials of the
Army Engineers and of the state of Nebraska. In 1946 Mr.
Quinn and T. B. Strain, president of a bank at Lincoln and
then treasurer of the Missouri Valley Development Asso-
ciation, said that construction contractors had been the
largest source of funds for the association. Contractors gen-
erally have favored the Interagency method because the
Army Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation usually
build their projects by contract; they have feared that MVA
would do its own building, as TVA has done. Carl Fred-
ericksen, president of a bank at Sioux City, Iowa, has been
chairman of the association.

Senator Murray has charged that private electric utili-
ties have waged a propaganda campaign against MVA

xin. MVA: HOPE OR BUGABOO OF THE BASIN? 273

&&&&<>*x>&x><$^^

through "front organizations with high-sounding names."
He asserted that MVA would promote private enterprise,
not retard it. The Senator has been told by Leif Erickson,
a former judge of the Supreme Court of Montana and
former chairman of the Regional Committee for MVA,
that the opposition to MVA would disappear "overnight"
if the bill were amended to deliver all electric power to the
private utilities at the dams.

[ 274 ]

O<>0<>O«><3x3K><><><3><3^^

CHAPTER XIV

Background for Prediction

VALLEY regionalism is an accomplished fact. The question
before the nation is how best to handle it. Running water
is no respecter of state sovereignty; management of a re-
gion's resources transcends the existing political boundaries.
It makes sense to unify in some manner the planning, con-
struction, operation, and administration of regional facili-
ties. A major watershed, like the Missouri, is a natural re-
gion. In the Missouri basin the broad objectives of the
existing plan are beyond cavil, even if some specific pur-
poses may be open to question. The broad objectives of
controlling and utilizing the water, the land, and the under-
ground treasures would be the same under any form of man-
agement.

The published and otherwise recorded arguments over
Missouri Valley direction could easily fill the traditional
five-foot bookshelf. For every argument on any side a
counter-argument exists.

The Engineers Joint Council, representing the national
engineering societies, spoke harshly in 1950 of the existing
method of planning. It declared:

"From an engineering standpoint the planning and exe-
cution of the Missouri basin program is almost entirely
backward. The engineering features contained in the pro-
gram were planned by various agencies restricted by law to

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 275

>&*$<X>$><$&X$<^^

limited objectives. The geographic spheres of operational
activities are as arbitrary as a degree of longitude, although
rigid and unyielding to geographic and land utilization
characteristics. Such characteristics and the needs of the
basin were ignored in determining which agency would de-
velop the water resources in a particular part of the basin.
The program was authorized by Congress in haste and
without appropriate public hearings in the basin. The se-
vere floods of 1943 and 1944 were stated to be the prime
motivator of the [Pick-Sloan] authorization, although the
plan, had it been in operation, would have contributed lit-
tle to the alleviation of the storm and physical conditions
that produced these floods. Time of the authorization was
opportune for such action. Little attention could be given
to the organizational structure of competing federal agen-
cies because Congress was faced with the pressing con-
siderations demanded in the winning of the war. A de-
tailed and systematic inventory of the resources of the
basin was not available in the planning stages. Such an
inventory has not been completed today, as witnessed by
field surveys being conducted by not less than five federal
agencies and at least one committee of state agencies. . . .
The agricultural, industrial and sociological problems of
the Missouri basin were not studied prior to authorization.
Specific projects were proposed and approved without re-
gard or consideration of their effects on the economy, trans-
portation, local government of counties, and general wel-
fare of the people in the areas and adjacent regions of the
reservoirs. Very serious conflicts continue to exist in the
jurisdiction of overlapping geographic provinces, in the al-
location of available waters for various functional uses, and

276 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

«*X><><><>00<><><^^

even in the allocation of portions of reservoirs' capacities
for functional uses. This lack of integration is readily under-
stood and was inevitable when such a dearth of data was
available and when so little planning and co-ordination
preceded authorization."

The remedy proposed by the Engineers Joint Council,
which presented its views to the President's Water Re-
sources Policy Commission, was to create a statutory fed-
eral agency, made up largely of non-governmental person-
nel, to review and diagnose water-resource developments.
This idea paralleled one advanced earlier by the Hoover
Commission on Governmental Reorganization and es-
poused by the later presidential commission.

Authorization of the Pick-Sloan plan was made by Pub-
lic Law 534 of the Seventy-eighth Congress, second session
— the Flood Control Act of 1944. An uninitiated reader
could hardly be expected to recognize this, however. The
text of the act deals mainly with a variety of individual
flood-control projects scattered all over the country, while
the opening section is a confusing statement of policy,
containing, among other things, the O'Mahoney-Millikin
amendment to protect the West's water. When you get to
Section 9(3) you find the actual enactment of Pick-Sloan;
namely: 'The general comprehensive plans set forth in
House Document 475 and Senate Document 191, Seventy-
eighth Congress, second session, as revised and co-ordinated
by Senate Document 247, Seventy-eighth Congress, second
session, are hereby approved and the initial stages recom-
mended are hereby authorized and shall be prosecuted by
the War Department and the Department of the Interior
as speedily as may be consistent with budgetary require-

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 277

0<****>0<X><XX^^^

ments." House Document 475 was the Army's Pick plan;
Senate Document 191 was the thick statement of the Bu-
reau of Reclamation's Sloan plan; Senate Document 247
was the reconciliation of these two as the Pick-Sloan plan,
the so-called "shotgun wedding/'

Although the planning of the present program has been
vigorously defended by its sponsors, who have asserted that
as many data were available for the basis of planning as
could be expected to exist, complaint over the methods
now in vogue has continued. Soon after the neighboring
Interagency committee for the joint basins of the Arkansas,
White, and Red rivers was formed, that body was told by
John M. Dewey, state water engineer for Missouri: "Our
experience in the past in river basin planning is that the
word 'comprehensive' has been used too loosely. It is an
established procedure and policy of the federal government
to plan river basin programs in terms of flood control, navi-
gation, or irrigation, with the other phases of the program
being considered as secondary. Too frequently we find that
the secondary interests in a project are of major importance
when the benefits attributed to such a project are analyzed.
Unless we are willing to recognize this and so declare our-
selves it seems futile for the states and the federal govern-
ment to continue spending time and money to develop river
basin programs that are limited."

The Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation,
and the Department of Agriculture are backed by strong
lobbies. The areas and interests that benefit from the opera-
tions of these agencies fight for them and for the status
quo. Only recently Chairman Carl Vinson of the House
Armed Services Committee told another congressional

278 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<>OOO<X*X><><><X^^

committee that the Army Engineers should be exempted
from a bill for emergency governmental reorganization. He
said: "We had better leave the Army Engineers alone.
They are a little bit too powerful and we shy away from
them. That's the lowdown." Although some of the higher
officials of the Department of the Interior have supported
the valley authority idea, there has been no sign that either
the subordinates in the Missouri basin or the lobby for the
Bureau of Reclamation agreed with this.

One of the big difficulties under the present method of
dealing with the Missouri Valley has been the necessity of
consulting a whole set of separate committees in each
house of Congress. In general this cleavage follows the
lines of the various federal departments involved. The val-
ley has recognized the problem and through the Missouri
River States Committee membership has tried to have a
single Senate committee and a single House committee
designated to pass on the watershed program. The en-
deavor has been unavailing. In contrast, any form of uni-
fied agency for this watershed would presumably be han-
dled by single congressional committees.

Senator O'Mahoney, Wyoming Democrat, and a West-
ern leader in the Senate, once took occasion to visit an
Interagency meeting and sound a warning that Congress
intended to retain over-all planning authority for the basin.
He was critical of the planning then being done, and said:
"The truth of the matter is you are now working on plans
without authority." At the same meeting a regional director
of the Bureau of Reclamation remarked, in the course of a
discussion of electric power: "I just want to remind the

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 279

<£><><><><><><><x-x^£><^^

committee that I do not receive my marching orders from
the committee."

Both Mr. Sloan and Governor Peterson have publicly
raised the issue of who will turn the water on or off when
the operational stage is reached. By this is meant: who will
be the water master, the arbiter between the Bureau of
Reclamation and the Army Engineers, and perhaps be-
tween those agencies and the states or the Department of
Agriculture, when it comes to deciding whether water
shall be held back of the dams or turned loose for one or
more uses? Enthusiasts for the present setup feel sure some
sort of proper operating agreement can be worked out. Skep-
tics wonder. Governor Peterson frankly expresses concern
in urging that an organization with definite power be es-
tablished to handle this and kindred functions.

In the 1949 report of the Hoover Commission on Gov-
ernmental Reorganization, a majority of its members
recommended transfer of flood control and rivers and har-
bors work from the Army Engineers to the Department
of the Interior. This was part of their general proposal to
concentrate all forms of governmental construction work
in that department. The commission's suggestion came
after one of its major task forces, on natural resources, had
urged creation of a new department of natural resources
to include such activities as those of the Bureau of Recla-
mation and the civil functions of the Army Engineers.
Leslie Miller, who was chairman of this task force, took
to the stump in support of its views. So much agitation
resulted that Interagency and the Missouri River States
Committee were seriously disturbed. The big guns' aim

280 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<*x£>«><><><><><><><>^^

was shifted from MVA to the task force, which was roundly
denounced at every river meeting for some time. This re-
sulted from fear the attack might adversely affect appro-
priations. One funny aspect of the situation was that Mr.
Miller was charging that the Army Engineers and the Bu-
reau of Reclamation by their actions were ''taking this
country down to socialism." This contrasted with the usual
theme of MVA opponents that MVA is socialistic and
Interagency the essence of democracy. But Mr. Miller had
no use for MVA either. He found a supporter for the
general principle of a new single department in Senator
O'Mahoney.

Next the cudgels were taken up by the President's
Water Resources Policy Commission, headed by Morris
L. Cooke of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and with
a membership of liberal tinge. This commission, in a series
of three documented reports issued in December 1950 and
February 1951, called for adoption of a unified national
policy in water-resource development. It advocated ''the
maximum sustained use" of the nation's water "to support
a continuing high level of prosperity throughout the coun-
try." The objectives listed for the nation as a whole apply
particularly well to the Missouri Valley. They are: "Safe-
guarding of our resources against deterioration from soil
erosion, wasteful forest practices, and floods; the improve-
ment and higher utilization of these resources to support
an expanding economy and national security; assistance
to regional development; expansion of all types of recre-
ational opportunity to meet increasing needs; protection
of public health; and opportunity for greater use of trans-
portation and electric power."

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 281

<><><>O<*^OO<><^^

The commission then recommended that programs
submitted hereafter deal with river basins as units. At this
point it took up the problem of administration, making
its own suggestion: an officially created river-basin com-
mission to deal with each major watershed. It would have
Congress order the various federal agencies to co-operate
with each other and with the states in surveys and plans.
The report continued: "These commissions, set up on a
representative basis, should be authorized to co-ordinate
the surveys, construction activities, and operations of the
federal agencies in the several basins, under the guidance
of independent chairmen appointed by the President and
with the participation of state agencies in the planning
process. Congress should designate the federal departments
and independent agencies to participate in the river basin
commissions. Such participation should provide for repre-
sentation of all agencies with functions included in water
resources programs. Congress should assure all such agen-
cies adequate authority to participate in comprehensive
planning on an equal basis, together with appropriations
consistent with such participation."

Notably, the Cooke commission called for completion
of projects now under construction as rapidly as the na-
tional emergency permits, but added: ''Construction
should be initiated on additional projects only as they are
clearly shown to be in conformity with revised and ap-
proved basin plans, or as they are required to meet the
emergency. The review of basin programs and the collec-
tion of necessary data should be pushed as rapidly as pos-
sible. Among the new projects to be considered for
initiation, first priority should be given to safeguarding

282 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<>0«><><>O<S>^><><^

present and future projects, as, for example, by reducing
sediment or recharging depleted ground waters, as well as
to developing new regional activity, as, for example, by
the production and distribution of electric power."

An incidental comment in the commission's report
cited one weakness in the present Missouri basin setup. It
said: "Certain responsibilities concerning land utilization
are vested in both the Bureau of Reclamation and the De-
partment of Agriculture, the division being unclear." It
asserted that some Reclamation and Army plans overlapped
and "in the area of overlap were also divergent."

The commission listed as one of the principles for re-
formulating water-resource policy the following: "The
necessity of planning for a river basin as a whole instead
of having a patchwork of plans by separate agencies for
separate purposes." The statement went on: "This will
assure the most harmonious development of the water re-
sources of the basin, enabling them to make their greatest
contribution to the welfare of the people. The motto must
be 'one river, one plan/ '

In its introductory statement the commission gave
some basic ideas, which, if heeded, may well revise the na-
tion's thinking. It said:

"We have used water badly, without proper respect for
its natural cycle, turning it from a friend to an enemy. We
have destroyed forests, leaving barren, denuded mountain-
sides from which rain water and melting snow pour un-
checked; we have overplowed and overgrazed our lands;
we have dangerously increased soil erosion, allowing pre-
cious topsoil to be carried to the sea, muddying our
streams, filling up our reservoirs, and increasing the damage

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 283

<*cXX>0O<*XX^<>^

from floods. . . . Now, midway in the twentieth century,
two facts have become compellingly clear. The first is
that water is limited in relation to the many and varied
needs for its use. These needs will grow in size and com-
plexity as the population grows and as industry develops.
More water for domestic use is needed by our growing towns
and cities. More water must be used to bring new lands
into production in the West. New industrial techniques,
such as those developed in the chemical industries, syn-
thetic fuel production, and the harnessing of atomic power,
bring with them increased demands for water. . . . The
second fact we can now see clearly is that the management,
conservation, and use of our water resources is inextricably
bound up with the management, conservation, and use of
our land and that both are essential to our expansion as a
nation. Floods cannot be controlled by building higher
and higher levees, or permanently by building dams, if
other things are neglected. The big streams are fed by
small streams, and water control inevitably leads us back
to the proper conservation of forests and agricultural land.
The farmer who holds the rain water by terracing his fields,
the group of farmers who band together to form a soil
conservation district, play an indispensable role in water
management. The preservation of our forests, our moun-
tain lakes and streams, and our wildlife sanctuaries has
ample justification in providing healthful sport and recre-
ation for the refreshment of the human spirit; but it is also
an essential part of water conservation and management.
In short, if we do not manage and conserve water, we suffer
losses, some of them irreparable, in our natural resources.
If we do not manage and conserve these other resources,

284 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<^<><><><^e><><><><><><><>«^

we shall lose the usefulness of our water: it will rush to
the sea, robbing instead of enriching us."

Unified responsibility must be applied to the planning
of multiple-purpose, basin-wide developments, said the
commission. It added: "This need not be in accordance
with the Tennessee Valley Authority pattern as far as or-
ganization is concerned. But it must take advantage of what
the country has learned from that experiment in unified
development of the water resources of basins. There is to-
day no single, uniform federal policy governing compre-
hensive development of water and land resources. Some
statutes of uniform application separately control various
aspects or functions. Others are geared to a comprehensive
approach, but focus attention on individual projects, spe-
cific areas, or single river basins. . . .

"When multiple-purpose dams are built with federal
funds, the federal government enters the field of economic
enterprise. The justification for this is beyond question.
No other agency can command sufficient capital resources
or provide the co-ordination necessary for the construction
of these great programs. But government enterprise does
not in any way supplant private enterprise. Rather its pur-
pose is to create the over-all conditions, the framework, in
order to provide the opportunity for the further expansion
and healthy functioning of a free, competitive economy.
In other words, 'planning' in the American sense means
planning to maintain and strengthen free competition.
Where natural monopolies exist, therefore, it is in accord-
ance with the American system that the government should
itself provide competition, if this is deemed necessary to

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 285

<>&$><Z><$><$><<><$><$^^

insure its benefits, as for example by providing low-cost
and abundant power. But it is not in accordance with the
American system, nor is it any part of the purpose of the
plans for water development proposed in this report, that
the federal government should itself become a great mo-
nopolist/'

The commission was critical of the Interagency system
as being insufficient and lacking in authority. It said that
the program thus far necessarily was characterized by a
"piecemeal approach." It showed the existence of an amaz-
ing set of confusions, duplications, and omissions in the
federal water laws placed on the books successively through-
out most of the nation's existence.

Ink was not long dry on the commission's report before
attacks on it began. Governor Peterson told a Mississippi
Valley Association convention at St. Louis that good things
in the report outweighed the bad, but that he had five specific
criticisms. Summarized, these objections were: (i) "The
commission has a definite and consistent bias for an au-
thority in all river valleys. We don't want that in the Mis-
souri basin. We'd like the control of development of our
basin in our own hands." (2) "The report reflects a
planned-economy approach that characterized the era of
the 3o's — the brain-truster approach. It speaks a great deal
of planning with broad social aims. The Missouri basin
doesn't want some one planning for it." (3) "It provides
for state participation only on an advisory basis; it says if
we can't have an authority, we should have a pepped-up
Interagency approach, headed by a chairman appointed by
the President, with only an advisory committee for the

286 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<x^<c><><^e<><><><><^^

states." (4) "The report is vague in the economic justifi-
cation of projects, the allocation of costs to various func-
tions, and in the reimbursement provisions." (5) "It talks
of co-ordination of national transportation services — every-
thing: railroads, air lines, trucking, and waterways — with
all rates fixed on actual costs. I don't see how you can do
that without nationalizing transportation."

Allocation of costs among various functions of a water
project, such as, say, flood control, irrigation, and electric
power, has long been a bone of contention. Weighty tomes
could be written on that subject; the solution is beyond
the scope of this volume. The Tennessee Valley Authority
has been attacked and defended repeatedly over its capital
cost allocations. The same attack has been leveled at the
MVA proposal. As a matter of fact, it can be raised with
equal force against the Interagency system. Economic
theories also clash in the sphere of reimbursement by bene-
ficiaries of public facilities, such as irrigation. The Cooke
commission argued for "a uniform national reimbursement
policy."

When Harold Stassen stumped Nebraska in March
1948 in his effort to win the Republican presidential nom-
ination, he devoted a large part of a major speech at Omaha
to the Missouri basin question. He said that he was op-
posed to the MVA method, but favored establishment of
"a definite Missouri valley region" to handle development.
His idea was that each governor should appoint a member
of the governing board. He continued: "The federal gov-
ernment should then make a contract with this regional
board, turning over the management of the completed proj-
ects of hydro-electric, irrigation and reclamation, and water

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 287

<><><><£><><^e><xx><><x^^

resources in exchange for a reasonable portion of the rev-
enues derived until such time as the investment is repaid.
... It is essential that there be some kind of over-all
administration to keep the whole inter-related resources
developing and utilized in a sound manner. But that over-
all agency should arise from the states, rather than be
handed down by the federal government. I am confident
that under the precedents that have been established in
the Colorado River cases and in the Supreme Court de-
cisions ... an administrative board developed by the
states can be given authority by the federal government to
administer completed dams and projects of this kind."

Late in 1949 Governor Peterson broached the proposal
for an interstate compact of the ten Missouri basin states
to set up a new administrative agency — the "water master"
idea. This was launched at a meeting of the Missouri River
States Committee by way of a speech by C. Petrus Peter-
son, past president of the Nebraska Reclamation Associ-
ation, a director of the National Reclamation Association,
lawyer, and former state senator. He argued for manage-
ment under a compact, but for leaving the planning and
construction to the existing federal agencies. The action
of the Missouri River States Committee was to call on the
Council of State Governments to delve into the matter.
A year later the states' committee received a sketchy state-
ment of underlying principles from representatives of the
council. This did not mention the compact idea, and spoke
only of water resources. The committee called for further
study by the council's specialists, with the tacit understand-
ing that soil control would be included in any final action,
but it did not appear that the compact idea had gathered

288 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<><>OC*X><£<><><X><>^

much support. Nevertheless, Governor Peterson has con-
tinued to hammer away publicly at the need for some
stronger management when the operational stage is reached.
His views are significant: he is not only an Interagency
member, but also the chairman of the states' committee
and as such is implicitly the leading spokesman for the
basin.

Frank Bane, executive director of the council, a clear-
ing house for all forty-eight states, pointed out in re-
porting to the Missouri River States Committee that the
study being made by the council staff dealt with needs of
the Missouri Valley alone, not of all river valleys. He said
the interstate compact idea would be taken under consid-
eration. Mr. Bane offered three "yardsticks" for guidance
of the continued study. As to the first of these, he said:
"Since the basin-wide system of water facilities is closely
interwoven, it follows that a high degree of unity of oper-
ational policy should characterize the management of the
basin's [water] storage facilities. How best to achieve the
degree of operational unity needed in the basin is a mat-
ter for serious concern. Experience indicates that a higher
degree of unity of policy can be attained if responsibility
for over-all operation can be centralized."

Immediately some sensitive representatives of states
were troubled over that word "unity." They feared that
this suggested a grant of too strong centralized authority,
and their semantic leaning was to substitute some such
term as "co-ordination," which they have learned not to
fear, that being Interagency's stated function.

Meanwhile, Raymond Moley, contributing editor of

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 289

<*£xX><XX><c><><;>«><^^

Newsweek and professor of public law at Columbia Uni-
versity, has come out in support of the interstate compact
as the solution of the needs of river-basin management. He
was critical of MVA and other valley authorities. His views
appeared in a copyrighted pamphlet, Valley Authorities,
published by the American Enterprise Association, Inc.,
New York, which describes itself as "an educational and
nonpartisan body" and is representative of business inter-
ests.

Spokesmen for major federal agencies operating in the
Missouri basin have expressed fears over the effect of an
interstate compact there. One has asserted that there is no
need for anything but the voluntary Interagency method;
another has argued that the compact method would fail
when it reached the point of apportioning water among
the states. A reading of the report of the President's Water
Resources Policy Commission tends to dispute the latter
point.

The views and recommendations of official, semi-offi-
cial, and private sources concerning a change in manage-
ment for the Missouri basin have been set forth in consid-
erable detail in this chapter for a purpose. That purpose
is to demonstrate that there is a feeling widely entertained,
except among existing agencies selfishly interested, that
something much better than we have now is seriously
needed to handle wisely and well the multi-billion-dollar
enterprise of making over this great region.

Beyond doubt, the states will demand a stronger voice
in the regional administration. They have had a taste of
this, first in a provision of the 1944 Flood Control Act

290 THE DAMMED MISSOURI VALLEY

<£>&$><$><$*><$>&$><^^

giving them a chance to object to development plans, and
second in the operation of Interagency, within which the
state representation started out almost as a conciliatory
gesture by the federal agencies and has grown to be strong
by sheer determination rather than by force of law.

The pattern of regional development throughout the
country is quite likely to be set by the outcome of the great
debate over the Missouri basin. Will there be an MVA,
more TVA's? Or more Interagencies? Or a full scheme of
interstate compacts, region by region? Or something else?
If prognostication ever is safe, it would appear to be safe
to predict that:

A centralized, unified, regional management of plan-
ning, construction, and operation will be set up by law in
the Missouri basin.

It will provide for a positive participation by the ten
states of the basin, but probably will include federal partic-
ipation, and will be under some form of federal selection
or authority.

It will utilize the skilled services of many existing fed-
eral agencies, either by direct designation or by assignment
of personnel, but will have a single strong voice in requiring
actual co-ordination without rivalries.

It will NOT be a superstate, with powers going far afield.

It WILL be qualified and dedicated to meet the needs of
modern regionalism on a logical, functional basis.

When you analyze all this objectively, the fact is that
the outlook is for something in the essence of American
democracy: a fair compromise. The new agency, authority,
commission, interstate union, or whatever it may be
termed will not be satisfactory to the extremists on any

XIV. BACKGROUND FOR PREDICTION 2Q1

&$><$>&$>&$&z><&s><^^

side — to either the more radical MVAers or the more con-
servative private-enterprise boys. Actually, it will not be
greatly different in essence from an MVA shorn of some
dubious elements. It might be what you could call an
MVAAA: the Missouri Valley Anti-Authority Authority.

INDEX

Aandahl, Fred G., 52, 93, 117, 257

Adams, Cassily, 81

Agricultural Economics, Bureau of,

143

Agricultural program, 175, 183,

190 ff., 245 ff.
Agriculture, Department of, 43, 60,

87, 169, 172, 179, 230, 250, 262,

277, 282

Air service etc., 45 ff.
Alberta, 5, 71, 212
Amerada Corporation, 163
American Enterprise Association,

289
American Federation of Labor, 267-

8, 271
Anaconda Copper Mining Co., 90,

129-30, 152
Anderson, Sigurd, 170
Arkansas River, 15, 277
Associated General Contractors, 269
Atomic Energy, 155—6

Badlands, 31, 165

Bald Hill Dam, 177, 209-10

Bane, Frank, 288

Batson, Avery A., 215

Baumhoff, Ruth C., vii

Benton, Thomas Hart, 81

Big Bend Dam, 115, 176

Big Horn Mountains, 39

Big Horn River, 22, 115, 177, 186,

248

Binaggio, Charles, 79
Black Hills, 35, 54, 153, 165
Blair, William M., 96, 132, 215
Blue— South Platte Diversion, 216
Bonfils, F. G., 125
Bonfils, Helen, 125
Bonner, John W., 170, 223-5, 257
Boysen Dam, 115, 177

Brady, E. M., 133

Brannan, Charles F., 86, 191, 193,

245-6

Brewer, W. Harrison, 133
Brokaw, Charles E., 99, 166, 170
Brunsdale, C. Norman, 171
Budget, Bureau of the, 177, 262

Campbell, Tom, 87
Canada, 5, 7, 71, 207, 258
Cannon, Clarence, 93
Canyon Ferry Dam, 19, 177, 252
Carey, Frank E., 155
Chamber of Commerce of the Unit-
ed States, 269

Chapman, Oscar L., 246, 254
Cherry Creek Dam, 177, 184
Cheyenne River, 58, 248
Christopherson, Fred C., 133
Clark, William, 11, 12
Coast and Geodetic Survey, 172
Cochran, John J., 261
Coffey, Max, 134
Colorado, 7, 179
Colorado-Big Thompson Diversion,

177, 185, 212

Colorado River, 15, 213 ,'

Columbia River, 14, 169, 228

Commerce, Department of, 86,
148 ff., 166, 169, 172, 179

Conant, C. B., Jr., 226 ff .

Congress, the, 278

Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions, 267, 271

Cooke, Morris L., 280

Coolidge, Calvin, 35

Corps of Engineers (Army), 150,
169, 172, 179, 188, 199, 205,
222, 235, 238, 242, 246, 249,
277-8, 282

Council of State Governments, 287

11 INDEX

<><><><><>«><X><><><><><>^^

Curran, Charles D., 222-3
Custer, George A., 13, 153

Dahl, Einar, 69

Davis, James A., 271

Democratic Midwest Conference,

268
Denver, 53, 99, 101, 108, 111, 123-

4, 136

Denver Post, 125, 132
Devils Lake, 208
Devils Tower, 31
De Voto, Bernard, 230
Dewey, John M., 277
Donnelly, Phil M., 134, 242
Doorly, Henry, 126-7
Dow Chemical Co., 155
Dust Bowl, 40, 103

Electric power, 188 ff., 229, 251 ft.
Electric utilities, 269, 272
Engineers Joint Council, 222, 231,

274 ff-
Erickson, Leif, 91, 273

Fairmont Corporation, 129
Farm Bureau Federation, 87, 269
Farmers' Home Administration,

226
Federal Power Commission, 169,

172, 175, 179, 188, 246
Federal River Basin Interagency

Committee, 169

Federal Security Agency, 169, 172
Fish and Wildlife Service, 172
Fleming, Roscoe, 133
Flinn, W. F., 132
Floods and flood control, 2, 53,

184, 237 ff.

Flood Control Act of 1936, 239
Flood Control Act of 1944, 183,

276, 289

Ford, Sam C., 92
Forest Service, 143, 146, 249
Fort Berthold Reservation, 115-16,

118
Fort Peck Dam, 10, 21, 52, 176,

188, 198, 203

Fort Randall Dam, no, 115, 176,

188

Fowler, Gene, 81
Fredericksen, Carl, 272

Gallatin River, 7, 18

Garrison Dam, 23, 75, no, 115,

160, 176, 188, 198 ff., 211, 248
Gasconade River, 242, 244
Gavins Point Dam, 176
Geological Survey, 172
Gillette, Guy M., 261
Glacier National Park, 38, 71
Glover, Roy H., 129
Granby Reservoir, 213
Grand River (Missouri), 23, 242-3,

248

Great Falls Tribune, 128
Green, William, 271
Greene, Ben H., 170-1, 256

Hancock Oil Co., 163
Hansen, Charles, 216
Harlan County Dam, 177
Heart River, 8, 53, 185
Hersey, John, 164
Highways, 43 ff.
Hippie, Robert B., 133
Hjelle, John O., 133
Homestake Mine, 153
Hoover Commission for Govern-
mental Reorganization, 15, 215,

222, 276, 279

Hopkins, Glen J., 170
Howard, Joseph Kinsey, 81
Hoyt, Palmer, 125
Humphrey, Hubert H., 94, 261
Hunt, Lester C., 94

Incodel, 15

Indian Affairs, Bureau of, 38, 114 ff.,
172

Inland Waterways Corporation,
172, 194

Interagency, see Missouri Basin In-
teragency Committee

Interior, Department of, 54, 72,
158, 164, 169, 172, 179, 246,
252-3, 262, 276, 278

INDEX 111

<^<£<><><><>0<£<><><><><X^

Interstate Commerce Commission,

234

Iowa, 7, 24, 179
Irrigation, 185 ff., 210 ff., 214 ff.,

225 ff.

ames, Burt, 128
ames River, 8, 208-9
efferson, Thomas, 11, 12, 35
efferson River, 7, 18
ohnson, Alfred L., 60 flF.
ohnson, Bruce, 206
oliet, Louis, 11

Kanopolis Dam, 177

Kansas, 7, 24, 179, 241-3

Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas),

2, 26, 28, 41, 85, 99, 102, 108,

111, 124, 136, 139, 184, 194,

234, 238
Kansas City Star, 124, 132, 209,

270

Kansas River, 2, 8, 242, 248
Karsten, Frank M., 261
Kefauver, Estes, 261
Kelley, C. F., 129
Kem, James P., 94-5
Kojetinsky, Al F., 271
Kortes Dam, 177, 189
Krug, Julius A., 246

Land Management, Bureau of, 146,

172

Langer, William, 94, 261
Lawrence, James E., 128, 133
Lewis, Meriwether, 11, 12
Library of Congress, 222
Locke, Jerome G., 223, 271

Mack, J. O., 271

Madison River, 7, 18

Manitoba, 71

Marquette, Jacques, 11

Matthews, I. J., 164

McConnell, Raymond A., Jr., 127,

133

Mickelson, George T., 93, 257
Midwest Research Institute, 149 ff.,

157, 166-7

Miller, Leslie A., 215, 222, 279-80
Millikin, Eugene D., 94
Milner, Harold S., 133
Mines, Bureau of, 157-9, 161-2,

164-5, 172

Minnesota, 7, 172, 179
Mississippi River, 29, 241, 248
Mississippi Valley Association,

265 ff., 269, 285
Missouri, 24, 40, 179, 231, 236,

241-3

Missouri, University of, 241
Missouri Basin Interagency Com-
mittee, and Interagency program,
vi, 60, 88, 92, 117, 133, 168 ff.,
173 ff., 179 ff., 183, 204, 222,
245, 285
Missouri Farmers' Association, 87,

240, 268

Missouri Point, 29
Missouri River, 2, 11, 16, 17, 174,

184**., 237 ff., 248
Missouri River States Committee,
134, 1695., 181, 222, 245, 278-
9, 287-8
Missouri-Souris Diversion, 185,

206 ff., 232
Missouri Valley Authority (MVA),

15, 87, 131, 218, 259 ff.
Missouri Valley Development As-
sociation, 272

Mitchell Daily Republic, 128
Moley, Raymond, 288
Monsanto Chemical Co., 156
Montana, 7, 20, 129, 179, 209
Montana Power Co., 90, 252, 254
Mosbaugh, Harrell F., 170-1
Munitions Board, 145, 166
Murray, James E., 93, 164, 261 ff.
Murray, Philip, 271

Napoleon Bonaparte, 11, 12
National Farmers' Union, 87, 268,

271

National Park Service, 38, 172
National Reclamation Association,

88, 230, 269

IV INDEX

<X><*£><><c><>C«>C<><><>^^

National Rivers and Harbors Con-
gress, 269

National Security and Resources
Board, 166

Navigation, 193 ff., 233 ff.

Nebraska, 7, 24, 91, 179

New England Interagency Commit-
tee, 15

New York Times, 96, 132

Norris, George W., 14, 91, 260

North Dakota, 7, 22, 179

Oahe Dam, 58, 66, 115, 176, 185,

188
Omaha, 26, 99, 102, 108, 124, 136,

140, 184-5, 194, 248
Omaha World Herald, 126-7, 132,

134, 270
O'Mahoney, Joseph C., 94, 117,

278, 280
O'Mahoney-Millikin Amendment,

94, 183, 224, 264, 276
Operation Snowbound, 50 ff .
Osage River, 28, 242

Patton, James G., 87, 215
Pendergast, Tom, 79, 125
Peterson, C. Petrus, 287
Peterson, Karl L., Jr., 133
Peterson, Val, 75, 92, 170, 175,

227, 257, 279, 285, 287-8
Pick, Lewis A., 11, 13, 16, 51, 116,

171, 176, 204, 215, 242
Pick-Sloan Plan, 14, 116, 173 ff.,

177, 183-4, 275 ff-
President's Water Resources Policy

Commission, 15, 231, 236, 257,

276, 280 ff., 289

Production and Marketing Admin-
istration, 60 ff., 247, 250
Progressive Party, 268
Public Affairs Institute, 222
Public Health Service, 170, 172,

179
Pulitzer, Joseph (the elder, Sr., and

Jr.), i3i

Quinn, John Bv 272

Railroads, 44 ff., 269
Reclamation, Bureau of, 115, 172,
175, 177, 179, 186, 188, 208 ff.,

222, 2p, 258, 277-8, 282

Reclamation Act, 228

Red Desert, 5

Red River of the North, 177, 185,

206
Regional Committee for the MVA,

222, 271

Republican River, 17, 177
Roberts, Roy, 124—5
Rocky Mountains, 39, 143, 214
Rocky Mountain National Park, 38,

213

Rocky Mountain News, 126, 132
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 14, 260
Rushmore, Mount, 35

Sabie, Leroy, 271

St. Louis, 5, 29, 107, 136, 140, 194

St. Louis Chamber of Commerce,

268

St. Louis County, 29, 99, 100
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 130—1,

270
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, v, vii, 130-

2, 155, 213, 240, 260, 268

St. Louis Star- Times, 130-1

Saskatchewan, 5, 71

Scottsbluff, 31

Shaplen, Robert, 132

Sharpe, M. Q., 92

Shelton, Sam, vii

Sheyenne Dam, 208-10

Sheyenne River, 177, 208-9

Shingler, Don G., 170-1

Signal Oil and Gas Co., 163

Silt, 247 ff.

Sloan, William Glenn, 11, 14, 161,

171, 204, 206, 210, 227-9, 247-

8, 279

Smith, Forrest, 171, 223
Smith, Nelson Lee, 256
Smithsonian Institution, 172
Soil Conservation Service, 60, 247,

250

INDEX V

&&&tt>$>$><$><$><$*$>&^^

Souris River (see also Missouri-

Souris Diversion), 207
South Dakota, 7, 23, 58, 179
Sparkman, John J., 261
Spry, Clyde, 250
Stassen, Harold, 286
States, 172, 263, 270, 287
Stong, Ben ton J., 87, 271
Strain, T. B., 272
Sturgis, Samuel D., Jr., 31, 171,

194-5, 238, 248

Tammen, Harry H., 125

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA),
14, 91, 253, 259-60, 265, 267,
284, 286

Thomas, Charles Allen, 156

Three Forks, 7, 16, 18

Tiber Dam, 186

Tobacco Root Mountains, 19

Truman, Harry S., 164, 175—6,
259—60, 262

Tuttle Creek Dam, 241

Union Oil Co., 163

Vernon, Kenneth F., 227
Vinson, Carl, 277

Walker, Lester C., 255

Walster, H. L., 211

War Department (see also Corps
of Engineers), 276

Warden, O. S., 128

Warne, William E., 253

Warren Livestock Co., 145

Water, sufficiency of, 220 ff.

Water resources, see President's
Water Resources Policy Com-
mission

Weather Bureau, 172

Wetzig, John E., 271

Wheeler, Burton K., 91

Wherry, Kenneth S., 93

Wyoming, 7, 10, 32, 179

Yellowstone National Park, 7, 31,

38

Yellowstone River, 8, 22, 248
Yellowtail Dam, 186, 189
Young, Gladwin E., 143, 170, 191-

2, 227, 249

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The text of this book was set on the Linotype in ELEC-
TS, designed by W. A. DWIGGINS. The Electra face is
a simple and readable type suitable for printing books
by present-day processes. It is not based on any historical
model, and hence does not echo any particular time or
fashion. It is without eccentricities to catch the eye and
interfere with reading — in general, its aim is to perform
the function of a good book printing-type: to be read,
and not seen.

The book was composed, printed, and bound by
KINGSPORT PRESS, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee.

LLOYD SPAINHOWER, St. LOUIS

RICHARD G. BAUMHOFF

was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 18
He has been a member of the staff of
St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 1918, £
since 1944 nas specialized in Missouri "\
ley matters, house and slum clearance, c
planning and development, regulation
public utilities, and elections. He has i
ited all forty-eight states and the District
Columbia and has traveled many th<
sands of miles in the Missouri Valley
automobile, plane, train, and horseba
He is married and at present lives in Bre
wood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb.

CONTENTS: THE DAMMED I rfl VALLEY

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ALFRED A. KNOPF, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK