An 80-mile run-of-river pool through the Big Bend of the Missouri — the tightest meander on the river, flanked by the Lower Brule and Crow Creek nations.
This lake IS mapped — marine-chart apps carry contours today. We're sourcing an open layer for all six pools (USACE Omaha surveys · state wildlife agencies · USGS ScienceBase). Depths will render against today's pool, not the full-pool number printed on fishing maps.
360°
This lake in 360° — 65 scenes · RM 1,010 →
Big Bend Dam closed in 1963, the last of the South Dakota mainstem projects, and its pool took yet more reservation bottomland — Lower Brule on the west bank, Crow Creek on the east, communities that had already absorbed the Fort Randall flood a decade earlier. Fort Thompson families were displaced twice in ten years.
The lake's centerpiece is the Big Bend itself — the Grand Detour that French traders knew, where the river swings twenty-five miles to gain one. Lewis and Clark walked the neck in 1804. The terrace above it holds some of the oldest continuously occupied village sites on the Missouri, a reminder that this was a crowded, farmed, storied valley long before it was a reservoir.
Terrain360 has captured roughly two-thirds of the mainstem in full 360° imagery. Tap any card to float that stretch in the viewer.