They had cultivated the bottomlands and were able to be largely self-sufficient. This amount was increased to $7.5 million in 1949, but it did not fully compensate them for the loss of their important farmlands, homes, towns, and graves. The tribes gained remuneration, but lost 94% of their agricultural land : 59–60 in 1947, when they were forced to accept $5,105,625. A complete block of Garrison Dam power was denied because it would violate the 1935 Rural Electrification Act. Threatened by confiscation under eminent domain, the tribes protested. These lands were owned by the Three Affiliated Tribes, and the territory 'had been their home for perhaps more than a millennium'. In order to construct the dam, the US government needed to purchase 152,360 acres (616.6 km 2) of bottomlands in the Fort Berthold Reservation that would be flooded by the creation of Lake Sakakawea. Majority-white communities had resisted having the dam built at other locations on the river where they would be affected. The dam was part of a flood control and hydroelectric power generation project named the Pick-Sloan Project along the river, after the two plan developers, Col. The reservoir impounded by the dam is Lake Sakakawea, which extends to Williston and the confluence with the Yellowstone River, near the Montana border.ĭams and reservoirs in the Pick–Sloan Program, and affected Indian reservations. Army Corps of Engineers from 1947 to 1953, at over 2 miles (3.2 km) in length, the dam is the fifth-largest earthen dam in the world. Garrison Dam is an earth-fill embankment dam on the Missouri River in central North Dakota, U.S.Ĭonstructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - Garrison Project

Lake garrison