Father DeSmet Monument

The stone puts Father De Smet here in 1840, and he was not. That summer he said Mass at the Green River rendezvous and went on to the Salish; he passed this water in late August 1851, coming south from the Missouri to the treaty council near Fort Laramie, and his companions named for him a small lake he put at about six miles long. Older names recorded for it mean holy or powerful water, and circling water. Jim Bridger pointed it out to travelers on the Bozeman Trail, which passed a mile west.

What the plaque says

Father DeSmet S.J. Here 1840 Erected 1940

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site — 4.6 mi
  A Bozeman Trail fort whose wood trains were attacked for two years, and the wagon-box corral where its woodcutters held out behind new breech-loaders in 1867.
• Occidental Hotel — 9.7 mi
  Buffalo's 1880 grand hotel, its 1908 saloon ceiling still pocked with bullet holes, won once in a poker game and nearly torn down in the 1990s.
• Trail End State Historic Site — 24 mi
  A Texas trail hand's Flemish Revival mansion, five years in the building, that he barely lived in once Wyoming sent him to the governor's office and the Senate.
• Sheridan Inn — 24 mi
  A hunting-lodge hotel with sixty-nine gables, where Buffalo Bill is said to have auditioned Wild West acts from the porch.

More markers nearby

• John (Portugee) Phillips — 4.7 mi
• Fetterman Monument — 7.3 mi
• The Fetterman Fight (panel) — 7.3 mi
• With the Arrival Of... (Fetterman) — 7.3 mi