Fort Peck

Fort Peck itself is mostly a quiet retirement town today, with 240 residents; at night the lights of ranch houses here are few and far between. It owes its existence to massive Fort Peck Dam, built on the Missouri River during the Great Depression. One of President Franklin Roosevelt's earliest and largest New Deal projects, the Fort Peck Dam provided a source of water and jobs. Now the 6-mi-long dam holds back sprawling Fort Peck Reservoir and wows visitors with the sheer scale of the earthen works. Fort Peck is a great base from which to fish for walleye, northern pike, and smallmouth bass on the reservoir, or camp and hike the remote Missouri River Breaks on either side of the lake.