First Permanent Fur Post

When Lewis and Clark reached Loisel's post on September 22, 1804, they found it empty; Clark noted a cedar fort built to trade with the Teton bands, with Lakota lodges and horse pens around it. They had already met its builder. Régis Loisel, from the Montreal district, passed them in May on his way down from Cedar Island and shared maps and advice, then carried a report on the river nations to the Spanish at New Orleans, where he died that October at about thirty-one. His partner Hugh Heney rejoined the North West Company.

What the plaque says

First Permanent Fur Post The partnership of Registre Loisel and Hugh Heney in 1802 set up a fur post on Cedar Island, within sight, about 5 miles down stream. Loisel was called Little Beaver by the Indians. This was part of Louisiana, receded by Spain to France in 1800 and ceded by France to the United States in 1803. On September 22, 1804 Lewis & Clark stopped at this post and described it. "Log palisade 13 1/2 feet high with sentry boxes at the corners 65x75 in size. Four room house within, one room for storage, one for trade, a common hall and a family house." Trade went on until 1810 when it burnt down, then the property of the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company. Manuel Lisa, after his Fur Post up river, Ft. Manuel, was burnt by British actuated Yanctonaise in March, 1813, came down to this area where he set up a refuge for the old and infirm River Sioux and, by wiles and stratagem, kept the Eastern Sioux, allies of the British, on tenterhooks, so they were of little value to the Brit- ish. Many historians think Lisa's part a most significant one in that War of 1812. Erected 1955 by Pierre Kiwanis and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Dakota State Capitol — 23 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

• Medicine Knoll River — 8.6 mi
• Ancient Indian Fortress — 16 mi
• Mentor Graham — 17 mi
• You Are Now on the 100° Meridian — 17 mi