August 18, 2026

Bridge to Nowhere
Chamberlain, South Dakota
2026

If you look closely you can see that these old bridge pilings don’t go all the way across the Missouri River at Lake Francis Case in Chamberlain, in fact not even half way across. That’s because the bridge was built in 1925, before the dam that formed Lake Francis Case was built. Once the dam went up the spans from this old bridge were moved downstream onto new pilings, as well as were spans from another bridge further down river, to form a new bridge that does span the lake (with the help of a rather long causeway built from the west side of the river).