DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1958, is located along the banks of the Missouri River in the U.S. states of Iowa and Nebraska. The 8,362-acre (33.83 km²) refuge (46% in Iowa, 54% in Nebraska) preserves an area that would have been otherwise lost to cultivation. In 1960, an Army Corps of Engineers channelization project on the Missouri River moved the main river channel in the area to the west. The former river channel became DeSoto Lake, a seven-mile long oxbow lake. As a result, part of the Nebraska portion of the refuge lies on the east side of the Missouri River.