Corps to host 150th anniversary open house at Lake Ashtabula near Valley City

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, is hosting an open house at Lake Ashtabula, near Valley City, North Dakota, Saturday, July 9, in honor of the district’s 150th anniversary.

The public is invited to attend the open house from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., at the Mel Rieman Recreation Area, which is located near Baldhill Dam. The event will include tours of the dam, visitor center exhibits and free root beer floats to the first 150 people.

The St. Paul District is celebrating its sesquicentennial throughout 2016. The district marks Aug. 17, 1866, as its birthday. This is the day Maj. Gouverneur K. Warren, a West Point graduate widely acclaimed for his leadership at the Battle of Gettysburg, arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, with orders to set up an engineering office. And since its creation, the district’s history has been entwined with the history of the region.  

The nearly 600 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, employees working at more than 40 sites in five upper-Midwest states serve the American public in the areas of environmental enhancement, navigation, flood damage reduction, water and wetlands regulation, recreation sites and disaster response. Through the Corps’ Fiscal Year 2015 $100 million budget, nearly 1,600 non-Corps jobs were added to the regional economy as well as $155 million to the national economy. For more information, see www.mvp.usace.army.mil.

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