The refuge is bounded by the Loess Hills on the east with a trail going to the top built originally by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

1 after much litigation using the contactors Rogers & Rogers completed ditches to drain nearly 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) of land into the Missouri River in a massive project in which more than 500,000 cubic yards of earth were moved (335,031 on Squaw Creek and 192,715 on Davis Creek) in area stretching from East Rulo to Mound City at a point where the Missouri River bottoms were said to be the widest of its entire length.

The Holt County Sentinel celebrated the completion with the headline "Rolls on to the Sea...Twenty Thousand Acres of Land Reclaimed and Will Here After Blossom as the Rose".

[5] On August 23, 1935 Executive Order 7156 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a reversal of the project to create a "refuge feeding and breeding ground for migratory birds and other wildlife."

A 0.25-mile (0.40 km) trail built by the Civilian Conservation Corps climbs 200 feet (60 m) vertically to a refuge overlook from which you can see Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.

They merge with the Little Tarkio Creek just south of the refuge in a man made ditch leading five miles (8 km) to the Missouri River.

Fish and Wildlife Service, said he was going to rename the refuge to Eagle Flats by the second week of January 2017 before the Barack Obama administration left office.