Fort Pierre

Twenty-five children were baptized at the mouth of the Bad River in June 1840, and this 1955 bronze names their fathers, traders and trappers called Dorion, Papin, Halsey, Campbell, Brazeau and Alleron. It does not name a single mother. It also dates the Verendrye plate to March 31, 1743, though the date scratched on its back reads March 30. And its opening line, the oldest continuous white settlement in the state, is a long-standing local claim resting on Joseph La Framboise's trading post of 1817.

What the plaque says

Fort Pierre The oldest continuous white settlement in the area of South Dakota. First visited by Verendrye, who took over for France by planting a lead plate on March 31, 1743. A monument marks the spot. It is over the R. R. track, first street to right, on hill to your left .6 miles. Joseph LaFrombois started first fur post here in 1817 on west bank of Missouri just south of mouth of Bad River. Whites here since then. Practically on same site, French Fur Co., Pierre D. Papin & Pascual Cerres had post Ft. Teton 1827 Sold to Am. Fur Co., 1830. Bad River, then called Little Missouri, was site where Father Hoecken on June 12-13, 1840 baptized 25 children, offspring of 13 traders and trappers, among them Dorion, Papin, Halsey, Campbell, Brazeau and Alleron. All these things happened in limits of Ft. Pierre.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Verendrye Monument — 0.4 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 — 1.6 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.
• Oahe Dam — 6.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Fur Posts — steps away
• Father Hoecken Monument — steps away
• Verendrye Hill and Monument — steps away
• The Stockgrowers Bank of Fort Pierre — 0.2 mi