Mile 139.5 - 139.5 - 136.5 LBD Salt Lake Island

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

139.5 - 136.5 LBD Salt Lake Island

Salt Lake Island is a beautiful two-mile long island that hugs the left bank descending in a beautiful wall of bluffs. Salt Lake Island Chute is a wide back channel that opens to easy passage in low water 8-10SLG. A smaller island inhabits the top of the back channel, with its own back channel that offer fun exploring. But it doesn’t open until higher water levels, maybe around 15SLG. Gentle inflow at 18SLG. Unfortunately Salt Lake Island is cornered by two giant limestone quarries and a power plant on the Missouri bank. Generous sand bars are found all around the island, top end for the highest sand, but bottom end sandbars are equally expansive in low water.

Mark River: “We paddle along and see a large structure in the distant. We land to find an old barge(LBD) that has been silted in to the sandbar. Maybe landlocked during the 2011 flood, it was halfway buried with coyote tracts of all kinds scattered through the wreck. The sun starts to dim so we see a eagle sitting high in the trees on Salt Lake Island. We pick a campsite, while we marvel at the heron rookery in the distance that was 100 nests strong. The only time to spot these rookeries is in the winter after the trees have fallen. We camp at the bottom of the towhead across from Fort Chartres chute, with a beautiful view of the River and the bluffs. We enjoy a meal of roasted pork chops and fried potatoes , while numerous coyote packs serenade each other in the distance. I take a walk in the morning down the Fort Chartres chute and look to the sky to see over 50 herons leaving the rookery headed towards the River. When they spotted me, they "parted like the Red Sea." This was one of my most spectacular wildlife encounters ever. (Mark River)

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