The signature 360° scene for this site will embed here after the Medora → Long X capture trip (target May–June 2027 paddling window, post-consultation).
There is no put-in here. There is no takeout. There used to be a confluence. The river that gave the corridor its name flowed into another river, and that river was the Missouri. Both of them are still moving — a hundred feet under the reservoir.
The geographic feature that gives the Little Missouri its name is no longer above water. From the closure of Garrison Dam in 1953 onward, the confluence has been submerged under Lake Sakakawea. The pool depth varies year to year; in average years, the confluence sits under roughly 90–110 feet of water.
This profile uses three reconstruction techniques: (1) historical aerial photography from USGS surveys conducted before the dam closure, (2) bathymetric data from the Army Corps of Engineers showing the buried river channels, and (3) photogrammetry of the present-day Bay surface for orientation. The output is a side-by-side view of pre-1953 and present-day at the same lat/lon.
What's underwater is not just a confluence. It's the bottomland that fed the MHA Nation — corn, beans, squash, the cottonwood gallery forests, the cemeteries, the towns of Elbowoods and Sanish, the homes of more than 1,500 tribal families. The Garrison Dam project, authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944 and built between 1947 and 1953, took those lands by eminent domain over MHA Nation objection. The signature photograph from the negotiation — Tribal Chairman George Gillette weeping at a Washington table while Interior Secretary Julius Krug signs the agreement — is one of the most-reproduced images in 20th-century federal-tribal history.
The drowned confluence profile is not nostalgia. It is a record. The MHA Nation has been doing this work for seventy years — in tribal council resolutions, in the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, in the Interpretive Center on the reservoir's north shore. The 360° layer joins that record. It does not replace it.
Directions. No direct visitation. Closest surface point is the MHA Nation Interpretive Center near New Town, ND.
Season. N/A.
Fees. N/A.
This profile is being built with the following partners. The published version replaces this stub list with named individuals per consultation outcome.