Welcome to the Tabor Lakeside Use Area

Welcome to the Tabor Lakeside Use Area. . Tabor Lakeside Use Area is located on Lewis and Clark Lake in southeast Bon Homme County, nine miles upriver from Gavins Point Dam. , Please note: As you enter the lake, be aware of possible high waves and increased recreational use, including motorized and sail boat traffic., Lewis and Clark Lake has 27 recreation areas offering hiking and biking paths, bird-watching, camping, hunting and fishing. Anglers find a variety of species, including walleye, catfish, sauger, white bass, northern pike and small mouth bass., The Missouri River has served as a great highway for millennia. Bullboats and canoes were used long before pirogues and keelboats served the fur trade along the river. The first steamboat to gravel this part of the Missouri was the Yellowstone, which reached Fort Pierre in 1831, During the 1860’s, steamboats became the vessel of choice along the river, transporting troops and supplies and helping to open Dakota and Nebraska territories to settlement. New villages, trading posts and wood yards provided travelers’ needs, while the steamboats supplied the growing farms and communities. Steamboat travel began to decline with the construction of railroads in the 1870s and was virtually eliminated by the Great Flood of 1881. , Immigrants from Czechoslovakia began arriving onto land in the Tabor area beginning 1868. , The town of Tabor, which translates to “camp” in Czech, was founded six miles north fo here in 1874 , Each year the town celebrates its heritage during Czech Days with a parade polka music, folk dancing and Czech foods., The Bon Homme Hutterite Colony was founded just upriver from here on August 24, 1874 by the first group of 113 Hutterite colonists who emigrated from Russia., Lead by Michael Waldner, the Bruderhof purchased 2,500 acres from Walter Burleigh at $10 per acre and constructed man of their buildings with yellow chalkstone from the banks of the Missouri. Members of the colony continue to farm the land in community., The Niobrara Formation is exposed in the bluffs surrounding Lewis and Clark Lake. This rock unit was formed approximately 85 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period while a shallow inland sea covered the area., Fossils, including coccoliths and foraminifera shells, make up most of the Niobrara Formation. It is also rich in fossil remains of fishes, marine reptiles, flying reptiles, and toothed birds., Bon Homme Island, historically located a couple of miles west of this access point, had already acquired its name by the time the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped there September 1st, 1804. The next day Clark surveyed ‘ancient fortifications’ on the island, which are now thought to have been naturally occurring sand dune. , The storied island gave its name to both the county of Bon Homme and to a once thiving riverboat town. The Missouri’s changing channel moved away from the town and at times left the island attached to Nebraska, as shown on the 1892 image. The 1,000 acre island now lies submerged beneath the waters of Lewis and Clark Lake.