Center of Missouri Valley History

The bronze stacks a century of Here on one bluff, and some of it stretches. Lewis and Clark's first council with the Lakota, on September 25, 1804, met on a sandbar at the mouth of the Bad River at Fort Pierre; the talks of the next two days were held at a Lakota village about two miles below the dam, not on its site. The rest is a fair index of the river's traffic, from fur posts by 1817 and the Yellowstone in 1831 to Harney's council in 1856. Its reverse maps the posts in sight.

What the plaque says

Centre of Missouri Valley History Here, you are halfway from the mouth to the source of the Missouri. Here was the centre of the Fur Trade for half a century, with eight different fur posts and two military posts within your vision. (See Map on reverse). This was, before white man came, an Indian capital. On this side, 1/2 mile above the dam and 25 miles downstream, were great bastioned fortresses. East of the river 10 miles North and 15 South were their counterparts. The remains of the downstream forts are to be seen today. Amid them were scores of Indian villages, cultivated lands. They were here in 1743 when Verendrye planted a leaden plate for France, four miles downstream. Here, in 1804 Lewis & Clark counciled with the Teton Sioux on this very dam site. Here, in 1811 the famous brawl immortalized by Washington Irving between Manuel Lisa and Hunt, leader of the Astorians, occurred. By 1817 there were permanent fur posts. Here, in 1831, the Yellowstone, first steamboat, came to carry away the buffalo hides and decimate the fabulous herds. Here, in 1856, Harney counciled with the Sioux, the largest aggregation of Indians ever assembled. Here, Sully's expeditions of 1863 and 1864 against the hostile Sioux jumped off. Here was the steamboat head for the great Black Hills Gold Rush in 1876 and the railhead for its contin- uance from 1880 to 1886. This is historic ground. Erected 1957 by Glenn W. Martens & State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oahe Dam — 1.1 mi
  One of the largest rolled-earth dams in the world, dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, holding back a reservoir that reaches more than 230 miles to Bismarck.
• Verendrye Monument — 6.2 mi
  The hilltop above Fort Pierre where three children found a lead plate in 1913 that two French brothers had buried in 1743 to claim the West for their king.
• South Dakota State Capitol — 6.3 mi
  A copper-domed capitol built to end three elections' worth of fighting over where the capital belonged, beside a lake fed by an artesian well with a gas flame burning in it.

More markers nearby

• Oahe Mission School and Chapel — 2.0 mi
• The Oahe Dam and Lake — 2.2 mi
• Sioux Indian Mosaic — 2.8 mi
• Fort Pierre Chouteau — 3.9 mi