Report of Accomplishments

The McCook Lake Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America has been chartered sinced 1936. Our oldest surviving member, Jerry Trudeau, was recruited in 1935 and still serves on our Board of Directors. A fire consumed the club house and all records in 1947. The present club house was built on leased ground on the west shore of the lake in 1951. The land was purchased in 1993. Since the lake, a former oxbow of the Missouri River, had several sand bars in it, the members successfully lobbied Senator Karl Mundt to get the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the lake in 1955. The Chapter bought a 40 acre tract and donated it to the State to provide public access. It was a men only chapter of 200.

In 1985 we began with $350 to buy baskets of groceries for needy families at Christmas, since then we've doubled it to $700 annually.

Also in 1985 we mortgaged everything to buy a building on 4 acres just off I-29 in North Sioux City, SD. We remodeled it into a bingo hall that has generated the funds to pay for our current projects. The Bingo Hall has been enlarged 3 times to where we can bring in up to 500 bingo players 5 days a week. We also have 4 rooms dedicated to video lottery and we own all 40 machines. It also has a short order kitchen and a bar to sell beer, wine, liquor, and cigarettes.

In the 1960's , the Corps of engineers channelized the Missouri River to provide commercial barge traffic to Sioux City, Iowa. Thus the river bed has scoured out to drop over 8 feet, in due course the level in the lake had also fallen by 5 feet to an average depth of 4 feet! In 1989 we began the lengthy process to qualify for a state dredge to come to McCook Lake. In November of 1990, we moved the state's 10 inch dredge "LAKE LADY" from Madison, SD to McCook Lake. A couple of months later, we purchased 415 acres on the inside bend of the lake and hired a highway construction contractor to build dikes 15 feet high around 100 acres to hold 2 million cubic yards of silt.

We use the state's 10 inch for two seasons until the state decided to sell the dredges. On February 2, 1993 we submitted the high bid for the 14 inch DAKOTAH. It is 27 feet wide, 90 feet long, and weights 146 tons. It has a 42 ichn cutter head and dredges a swath 35 feet deep by 120 feet wide. After 4 seasons of dredging, we are about half finished.

In the way of conservation education, we donated $15,000 to the construction of the Woodbury County Conservation Board's new building in Stone State Park.

In 1994 we entered into an agreement with SDSU in Brookings to establish an endowment fund for scholarships in the Wildlife Sciences Department. We gave $1,000 for a scholarship and $10,000 to start the endowment. Our goal is to do this annually until the endowment reaches $100,000.

Every Springs, members volunteer to clean litter from 3 miles of ditches around the lake and from the lake also.

Our chapter buys several thousand fish to stock the lake with walleyes, northerns, and catfish.

Our monthly chapter meetings are usually preceded by potluck dinner.

Family memberships were approved in 1986 and account for half of 1994's count of 220 members.

Half of the 21 members of the Board of Directors are elected yearly. Since 1983, the officers have been President - Al Parvu, 1st VP - Jerry Trudeau, 2nd VP - Art Christopherson, Treasurer - Gene Muir, and Secretary - Sid Wagner, Jr.