Scuba One Travel

06/18/2026

This Massive Lake Beach In North Dakota Feels Like The Ocean 👇👇

06/14/2026

🌊 When Lake Sakakawea drops low enough, parts of old Elbowoods can return to view.

Not as a mystery.

As a wound. 💔

Elbowoods was once one of the central communities of the Fort Berthold Reservation and an important hub for the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. It held reservation offices, homes, churches, schools, businesses, roads, gardens, and the everyday life of a river-bottom community built along the Missouri.

Then Garrison Dam changed everything.

In the 1950s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the dam, creating Lake Sakakawea and flooding Elbowoods along with other Fort Berthold communities and some of the richest agricultural and culturally important bottomlands on the reservation. Families were forced from the river valley to higher ground. Buildings were moved or lost. Cemeteries had to be relocated. A capital, a homeland, and a way of life were broken apart by rising water.

That is why exposed remnants of Elbowoods are not just “ruins.”

For the MHA Nation, they are part of living memory.

The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation has its own Tribal Historic Preservation Office, with authority over preservation on Fort Berthold and across ancestral homelands. That matters. Because when pieces of Elbowoods reappear, tribal citizens and preservation staff are not outsiders interpreting an abandoned place.

They are looking at their own history.

They do not need the story translated for them.

They know what was taken.

They know what the lake covered.

And they know that when the water drops, it is not simply revealing archaeology. It is revealing the physical remains of a community the federal government forced beneath the reservoir.

What do you think it means when a drowned capital keeps coming back above the waterline?

06/08/2026

Heading to Lake Sakakawea this weekend? Stop by and visit with aquatic nuisance species experts at select boat ramps!

Representatives from MHA Nation, ND Game and Fish, USACE, ISAN, and our partners will be ramp-side June 5–8 to share simple ways you can help protect our waters from aquatic nuisance species.

Come ask questions, learn more about Clean. Drain. Dry., and pick up some free outreach items.

Whether you are boating, fishing, camping, or just enjoying the lake, we hope to see you out there!

Clean. Drain. Dry. Every time.

06/07/2026

Visit https://water.usace.army.mil/ and search Garrison

06/02/2026

This is the time of year to dive Spiritwood Lake.

On this date in 1908, over 500,000 walleyed pike were released into Spiritwood Lake by U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel!

Interestingly, that was the same year North Dakota's oldest reservoir, North Lemmon Dam in Adams County was built. Years later, the Spiritwood Lake fish hatchery was opened in Stutsman County north of Jamestown.

We have ample fishing opportunities today that many continue to partake in! We know anglers don't fish and tell, but where is your favorite spot to cast a line around Jamestown?

Photo is Spiritwood Lake fish hatchery courtesy of the State Historical Society of North Dakota taken in the 1920s.

05/29/2026

05/11/2026

DiveCouples.com

A trove of snapshots from a 1960s diving expedition reveals stunning glimpses of Jamaica's vibrant ecosystems of the past. This is transforming our vision of what coral reefs can be.