Lake Sakakawea Water Level
Lake Sakakawea is at 1,823.87 ft today (Oct 19), 30.13 ft below its 1,854 ft full pool, down 0.29 ft this week.
North Dakota · Missouri River
Sponsor Lake Sakakawea
Put your marina, real-estate, or local business in front of everyone checking this lake's level. One exclusive sponsor per lake.
Renews automatically each month or year until you cancel. Cancel anytime online. Terms · Manage or cancel · Questions?
Water level history
About Lake Sakakawea
Lake Sakakawea is a reservoir on the Missouri River in North Dakota, operated by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Its full summer pool sits at 1854 ft above sea level. Live water levels come from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (CWMS) and update hourly.
Understanding Lake Sakakawea's water level
Garrison Dam closed the Missouri River on April 15, 1953, and the reservoir behind it now backs up about 178 valley miles to near Trenton, close to the Montana line. The dam is a rolled earth embankment 11,300 feet long counting the spillway, built from 66.5 million cubic yards of fill. The Corps divides the lake into stacked storage zones. Below 1775 feet is permanent pool. From 1775 to 1837.5 is carryover multiple use storage, nearly 13 million acre-feet held back to carry the Missouri River system through drought. From 1837.5 to 1850 is annual flood control and multiple use space, about 4.2 million acre-feet that is refilled each spring and evacuated each fall. The top four feet, 1850 to 1854, is exclusive flood control. Above 1854 the lake is into surcharge, which runs to 1858.5 feet with the spillway gates in play. A normal year follows the same shape: lowest in late winter, rising March through July on plains snowmelt and then mountain runoff, and drawn down from late July through the winter to make room for next spring.
The lake drowned the heart of the Fort Berthold Reservation. The Garrison project took 152,360 acres from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, more than a quarter of the reservation, and uprooted 325 families. Elbowoods, the reservation headquarters with a Catholic mission and school, went under in the 1950s; residents moved buildings and even cemeteries as the water came up, and the post office closed in spring 1954. Sanish and Van Hook were also inundated, and New Town was built from scratch to replace them. The center span of the old Four Bears Bridge at Elbowoods was floated upriver and reused in the crossing at New Town. The most remembered image of the project is dated May 20, 1948: tribal chairman George Gillette, glasses in hand, wiping away tears as Interior Secretary Julius Krug signs the agreement for the taking. In 1992 Congress approved a $149.5 million settlement to address what had been judged unjust original compensation.
Swings on Sakakawea are measured in tens of feet. The Corps puts the record high at 1854.8 feet in 1975, 0.8 foot into surcharge. The 2011 flood came within two tenths of that, peaking at 1854.6 feet on July 1 in the largest runoff year on record for the upper Missouri basin, and releases hit 150,000 cubic feet per second on June 17, the first time the spillway was ever used for regulation. At the other end, the 2000 to 2007 drought pulled the lake to a Corps record low of 1805.8 feet on May 12, 2005, more than 30 feet below the base of the flood control zone. The state spent about $1.2 million extending ramps in 2004 and budgeted $1.7 million more in 2005. Those low water ramps spent most of the next two decades underwater, and in August 2026, with the lake near 1827 feet, Game and Fish was preparing to bring them back into service.
Lake Sakakawea — frequently asked
What is Lake Sakakawea's full pool elevation?
The number you will see most often, 1854 feet, is the top of the exclusive flood control zone and the Corps' maximum operating pool, where the lake covers about 383,000 acres. The Corps treats 1850 feet as the maximum normal operating pool. The figure that matters most for day to day operations is 1837.5 feet, the base of the annual flood control zone. The Corps expects the lake to sit at or above that level about 55 percent of the time.
What is the record high on Lake Sakakawea?
1854.8 feet in 1975, when Garrison releases reached 65,000 cubic feet per second and the river at Bismarck crested at 14 feet; the Corps estimates it would have reached about 21 feet without the upstream dams. 2011 is a close second at 1854.6 feet on July 1. The lake has gone past the 1850 foot base of exclusive flood control in 1969, 1975, 1995, 1997, 2010, 2011 and 2018, and has entered surcharge above 1854 only in 1975, 1997 and 2011. The gauge on this page only keeps about six years of readings, so its high and low are recent marks, not these records.
What is the lowest Lake Sakakawea has ever been?
The Garrison water control manual lists a record low of 1805.8 feet on May 12, 2005, near the bottom of the 2000 to 2007 drought. During that same drought, storage across the whole Missouri River mainstem system reached a record low of 33.9 million acre-feet in February 2007. The previous drought, from 1987 to 1992, bottomed out at 1815.0 feet in May 1991. Some news reports and Corps staff quotes put the record at 1807.1 feet in February 2007 instead.
Why is Lake Sakakawea so low in 2026?
Thin Rocky Mountain snowpack produced a weak spring runoff into the upper Missouri basin, and drought has persisted across North Dakota and Montana. In early August 2026 the Corps reported the lake at 1827.3 feet, about 12 feet below average, and said it was not likely to reach the record low in the next year or two. Lewis and Clark State Park had no working ramps or marina, and Van Hook Resort had lost one of its double lane ramps.
What happened at Garrison Dam in 2011?
2011 brought 61.0 million acre-feet of runoff to the upper Missouri basin, almost two and a half times average and the most since records began in 1898. Sakakawea was in or above its exclusive flood control zone from May 22 to August 8. The powerhouse passes only about 41,000 cubic feet per second, so the Corps opened the outlet tunnels and used the spillway for regulation for the first time, running it from June 1 to August 17. Spillway flows carved a channel about 370 feet wide below the dam.
Are there salmon in Lake Sakakawea?
Yes. Chinook salmon were first stocked in 1976 to use deep cold water that no other sport fish occupied, feeding on rainbow smelt introduced in 1971. They do not reproduce naturally here, so Game and Fish collects spawning fish each fall in Rodeo, Government and Pochant bays and stocks roughly 400,000 smolts a year. Walleye is still the main draw, and the department's own Missouri River supervisor says salmon fishing is nowhere near walleye fishing.
How does the lake level affect fishing?
Rainbow smelt feed both walleye and salmon, and they need cold, oxygenated water through summer. Game and Fish has recommended that the Corps keep Sakakawea at or above 1,832 feet to protect adult smelt. Low water also shuffles access and hazards: wardens warn that rock piles, sandbars, submerged trees and old structures sit closer to the surface, and that a route safely run last season may not be safe this one.
Other lakes near Lake Sakakawea
See current levels for all 6 North Dakota lakes and reservoirs →
Add this gauge to your website
Run a marina, boat rental, guide service, or real-estate site on Lake Sakakawea? Put this free live-level widget on your page — just copy and paste the code: