Boyer River (Iowa)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Boyer River is a 118-mile-long river in western Iowa. It is a tributary of the Missouri River and flows through Pottawattamie County before joining the Missouri. Most of its course has been straightened and channelized. The river was named for an early settler who hunted and trapped in the area before Lewis and Clark explored the region.

Explorers such as Lewis and Clark, John James Audubon, and Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied traveled near the river’s mouth as they moved up the Missouri. The area around the mouth is now part of the Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuge. Boyer Chute formed when sediment deposited by the Boyer River created an island in the Missouri River; the Missouri then cut a new main channel through that sediment, which became known as Boyer Chute and was used by explorers and traders until the river’s course changed again.