Fort Atkinson

Long's men built their winter quarters on September 19, 1819, about half a mile above Manuel Lisa's trading post, and named the camp Engineer Cantonment after their steamboat, the Western Engineer, a 75-foot stern-wheeler with a bow shaped like a serpent. Thomas Say, Titian Peale and Samuel Seymour spent the winter recording what lived around them, among it the coyote, then new to science. The camp was lost for nearly two centuries until History Nebraska archaeologists found it in 2003, uncovering a 30-by-48-foot building with a double fireplace. It joined the National Register on November 17, 2015.

What the plaque says

Fort Atkinson A few miles north is Ft. Atkinson (1819-27), the first U.S. military post west of the Missouri River. The fort's location at the "Council Bluff" was recommended by Lewis and Clark in 1804. It was established to assert U.S. influence over the Indian tribes and to protect the fur trade from the British. Many famous men of western history passed through the fort, including fur trader William H. Ashley; mountain men and trailblazers Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and Hiram Scott; Gen. Henry Atkinson, Maj. Stephen Long, and three officers who later became generals and for whom forts were named--Col. Henry Leavenworth, Maj. Stephen Watts Kearny, and Lt. Bennett Riley. Long's famous exploring party wintered near Ft. Atkinson in 1819-20. Long camped just west of here near the banks of Big Papillion Creek. He referred to the region to the west as the "Great American Desert," a name that appears on maps as late as the mid-1800s. Today Ft. Atkinson State Historical Park includes a reconstruction of the fort and a visitor center. Historic Highway 36 Association Nebraska State Historical Society Conagra Foundation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 5.0 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — 6.5 mi
  The first U.S. Army post west of the Missouri, a garrison town of more than a thousand people on Council Bluff from 1820 to 1827, rebuilt on its own foundations.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 6.9 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 9.1 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.

More markers nearby

• Boettger Farm — steps away
• Potter's Field — 4.0 mi
• Shipley Cemetery — 4.0 mi
• Kobs Pioneer Cemetery — 4.6 mi