DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1958, is located along the banks of the Missouri River in the U.S. states of Iowa and Nebraska. The 8,362-acre refuge preserves an area that would have been
The refuge on June 20, 2011, during the 2011 Missouri River flood. The oxbow lake is in the upper left. Five days later, a levee breach resulted in the refuge closing after being nearly totally inundated. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station is in the foreground.
DeSoto Lake was once part of the Missouri River, but rechannelization projects cut a large bend out of the river, forming the lake at Desoto NWR
Red-headed woodpecker at DeSoto NWR.
DeSoto NWR center, housing the Bertrand exhibit.
Bertrand (steamboat)
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The Bertrand was a steamboat which sank on April 1, 1865, while carrying cargo up the Missouri River to Virginia City, Montana Territory, after hitting a snag in the river north of Omaha, Nebraska. Ha
DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge
…the lake, which are open outside of the bird migration seasons. The refuge also documents the area's human history. In 1865, the sternwheel steamboat Bertrand, bound for the Montana Territory, sank in the Missouri River. The boat and its cargo rested on the river bottom until 1968, when the wreck was rediscovered…
Model of the Bertrand
Display of artifacts recovered from the Bertrand