I have used both these photos before but wanted them as reminders to show what changes have resulted from the Corps of Engineers' putting in Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, the lowest of the Missouri River dams for flood control. Above is a 1948 photo (?) of the ferry landing I grew up with. Below is a 1968 photo sent by Mark Donley Feddersen from their visit that year, a better view of the ferry as it approached the South Dakota landing at Running Water. Both illustrate how broad the Muddy Missouri was in those days when it would gather snowmelt and sometimes flood all the river towns on the floodplains, including Sioux City and Omaha, not to mention all the other low-lying areas along its turbulent course. A different kind of flooding occurs now as the mud building up at the dam sites backs the river up to spill into all the low areas along it.
Simply because we live long enough, those of us beyond 70 become default historians of all our cultural losses forever and the constant changes occurring in this dynamic country. So I'm describing my version of what history has swallowed up. If you look closely, you'll realize the first, older ferry is all wooden, as the second is all metal. You can't see the large paddle wheel of the wooden one, as wide as the barge and about as high as the deck house, noisily slapping the water as we chugged across. The one I remember best is the wooden one, but I recall all the publicity when it had been gone for a few years and the new metal one was laboriously brought upriver somewhere from the South, I think, to restore the service. Both took a wide slanted-U-shaped arc, rather as if you let a very long rope be dragged into a long catenary-like curve by the treacherous currents across the always-shifting sandbars and boils, as Dad called them, where the water wells up in low mounds, bad spots for boats. He knew, a regular river rat who hunted and fished the Missouri for so long, the sheriff called on him to find drowning victims, and others considered him a resident expert at reading the Might Mo.
The ferry landing was at the end of a gravel road north from State Highway 12 northeast of Niobrara, the second oldest town in Nebraska, then on the flat at the junction of the Niobrara and Missouri Rivers. (Lewis & Clark camped at the actual junction where the railroad bridge crossed, as noted in the new Niobrara State Park atop the hills to the west.) The photos I took recently (8 June) explain well enough why the town was moved up to the hilltops to the south and the old town razed and turned into a golf course. The siltation levels have created problems at all the dam sites, the Missouri still maintaining its reputation for muddiness, as I can vouch for from a sandbar picnic when I was young: the coffee made by Dad with river water had to settle after perking and then had to be poured carefully to avoid all the mud (about a third of the pot?), and even then it tasted gritty. Roughly the same experience as drinking Greek coffee, as I did when I was over there, the little cups of superstrong coffee half-filled with grounds so that I drank carefully or got a mouthful of grounds to chew or spit out.
Now that gravel road is a fine highway straight to the Standing Bear Bridge slanted up to meet the South Dakota bluffs, bare remnants reminding us oldsters what had been a pure joy, driving the car onto and off the deck (see the wooden gangplank in the first photo) and then standing at the railings, watching the roiling currents, on the long ride across. When the ferry happened to be on the opposite side, you raised a white flag up a pole to signify you were waiting, though, if you were the only one, you might have a long wait, besides which sometimes, when the river was either high or low, it took the ferry longer to navigate the deep and shallow strong currents. But it still saved the time and gas it took to drive west to Spencer beyond the river's curve northward into South Dakota or to the Yankton bridge or the next crossing at Sioux City. Besides, the Nebraska side had the Ferry Inn near the landing for much of that period, and it had a good reputation for catfish dinners. And we lived in more leisurely days.
This is the Highway 12 view northwest toward the new bridge, the one at right with the zoom lens showing the barely visible Standing Bear Bridge of the left photo.
Growing up, I looked across cornfields and pastures with grazing cattle toward the tree-lined river. (The willows and other trees marking the river banks can be seen in the first two photos.)
The old ferry landing on the Nebraska side was to the left/west of the new highway bridge, accessible only by a road from the old town site farther west that winds along the river. The bit of diagonal "road" here isn't, ending abruptly to the left of the photos in the vast marshes of cattails, sedges, water plants hiding egrets, herons, ducks, other water creatures like muskrats. We saw a deer splashing through east of the bridge, but I wasn't quick enough to photograph it.
This view south from the scenic drive-out on the South Dakota side looks directly across at the old ferry landing pictured above. Notice the grass in the river foreground, impossible in those first photos. Not far east the river becomes braided through thick marshes, so that the main channel is hard to find and you see nothing but green looking across it. Niobrara lies on the hilltops off to the right/west. I've always thought the hills around here would make good western movie sets.
The little village of Running Water, where some Koftan relatives once lived, has become a collection of retirement and summer homes. It is off to the right of this view northward up Standing Bear Bridge, below the visible white house next to the green sign.
And this is the view back, from the old South Dakota ferry landing toward the Nebraska landing, which I was aiming directly at in the center, looking southwest.
In case someone doesn't know Native American history, the Poncas lived in the Niobrara area, the old Ponca Agency now restored southwest of the town, south of the park. Standing Bear was the chief who came back from Oklahoma exile to bury his son in their ancient tribal ground and consequently became the centerpiece of a major trial at Fort Omaha in the north part of Omaha (today the site of the restored Crook house and a Metro Tech campus), with General Crook on his side, at which Native Americans were first declared American citizens, a major legal decision. The Ponca chief is supposedly buried in the small cemetery by the Niobrara agency, but I was able only to find a marker for his wife and a grandson or great grandson (?) when Mom and Dad took me out there, Dad warning me about rattlesnakes.
We called her Bubbs, and she was the last of Vern and Lizzie's children, the matriarch of the Stocking clan, who filled her 89 years very full, darkly beautiful and tart-tongued, a joy to know.
And, as a bonus, for it was on my Stocking scrapbook page, is this large group of Luckert family children. Back row, L-R: Dixie Alexander, Judy Bruhn, George Luckert, Neal Alexander; front row, L-R: Owen Davids (?), unidentified girl, Beth Alexander, JaVee Ann Luckert, Sue Ellyn Luckert, and Debra Lee Jorgenson (Darlene Luckert Jorgenson's daughter, Uncle Chet's granddaughter).
