NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

October 22, 1998

Plains Folk: Giants in the Earth

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

©1998 Plains Folk

There were giants in the earth in those days, and I'm not talking about Ole Rolvaag. I'm talking about Brigadier General Lewis A. Pick, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the late 1940s.

General Pick told us the Missouri River was "wild and untamed," it was "perhaps the wildest river in America," a river that "devoured rich valley lands, destroyed men and farms and towns." He promised the Pick-Sloan Plan to dam the Missouri would "turn a destructive stream into a constructive force for the benefit of millions." The key to it all, he said, was Garrison Dam.

I'm reading here from a remarkable compilation of clippings, documents, and photographs by Sheila C. Robinson of Coleharbor, N.D. It's called "The Story of Garrison Dam: Taming the Big Muddy." She published it in 1997 in association with the 50th anniversary of the founding of Riverdale, the town established by the Corps to house construction personnel.

Robinson grew up on a ranch north of Hebron. Her future husband Dave was from east of the big river. When he was courting her, she says, "Dave used to keep the Stanton Ferry busy coming over to see me." They live about four miles southeast of Garrison Dam. They lost about a section of land to it, but they also made a little money hauling potable water to the boom towns nearby.

To the people who experienced both the trauma and the boom that accompanied construction of this great earthen dam, Robinson's book is a stroll down memory lane. In its pages Eucskinners (operators of Euclid earth-movers) once again shiver behind flimsy canvas while scraping up 50 yards of earth at a pop. Couples take to the floor for dancing every Friday night at Overlea's of Gateway and come back for roller skating on Sundays. Not everyone is happy about the dam, but everyone has a job.

The rest of us get to re-live those memories and also get educated about the enormous importance of this project to the northern plains. Peter Kiewet & Sons and Morrison Knudson, the major construction contractors, put out an immodest booklet about their "mammoth construction feat" and called it "Miracle on the Missouri." Army engineer Harland G. Hutchins, holder of a Bronze Star for his heroism in Europe during the late war, pledged to build in Riverdale "the perfect town, as modern and as pleasant to live in as engineering imagination and efficiency can make it."

All around the big operators, small-time entrepreneurs scrambled, founding boom towns and throwing up scruffy businesses. First there was Silver City, an aggregation of cabins (probably granaries from nearby farms) and a tar paper outhouse. Its founder, O.A. Burgeson, was best-known for his wondrous salve, which he said would cure pneumonia. Then there was Big Bend, which started as just a tavern. In fact, before construction even started nine hopeful publicans had forked over $1,000 each to the McLean County treasurer for liquor licenses.

And then there are the little human-interest stories, such as that of George W. Gregg, the celebrated horticulturist. He not only knew how to grow square carrots but also had a 22-acre orchard of fruits and ornamentals on a cove of the Missouri. He had been inspired to create his orchard while serving in China during the Boxer Rebellion. Now he was being flooded out by the dam. So the Corps put him in charge of landscaping Riverdale and let him move his trees there as part of the contract.

All those guys out there trolling for walleye—do they have any idea what went into making this great lake of the plains?

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136