First Election in Northwestern United States

The private who won the vote outlived the expedition by more than six decades. Patrick Gass, born near present Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on June 12, 1771, saw his journal published in 1807, the first account of the journey in print. He served again in the War of 1812 and lost an eye. In 1831, at sixty, he married Maria Hamilton, who was twenty, and they had seven children before her death in 1846. Gass died at Wellsburg, West Virginia, on April 2, 1870, in his ninety-ninth year.

What the plaque says

First Election in Northwestern United States Lewis & Clark reached a point in what is now Sioux City on August 20, 1804 near the mouth of Floyd River. Sergeant Charles Floyd, who had been taken sick with a "Biliose Chorlick" the day before, died near a bluff on the east side of the river. The small river was named for him. The next day they passed the Big Sioux and on the evening of the 22nd, they tied up on the north bank of the river at a point they even then called Elk Point, on account of the elk seen in the vicinity. The two captains, who shared their leadership, as does a partnership, each partner having exact equality, conducted their own primary election and nominated privates Pat Gass, a Pennsylvanian; George Gibson from the same state and William Bratton, the expedition's blacksmith, for the vacancy left by Floyd's death. This was the first election ever held in the Louisiana Purchase and the Northwestern part of the United States. Pat Gass was the winner with nineteen out of a possible twenty-seven votes, if only soldiers and that seems most prob- able, could vote. Gass proved to be a most acceptable sergeant and his journal furnished a most worthy auxiliary to those kept by the two captains. Erected 1966 by Union County Commissioners

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ponca State Park — 6.5 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.
• National Music Museum — 14 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 19 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.

More markers nearby

• Elk Point — steps away
• Grasshopper Cross — 3.8 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 5.3 mi
• Richland Methodist Episcopal Church — 5.4 mi