Lewis and Clark Memorial Bridge at Chamberlain

The bronze calls the magpie taken at Camp Pleasant a bird not known in the eastern states, and the captains soon sent the East a live one. In April 1805 four magpies left Fort Mandan with a prairie dog and a prairie grouse, and all were alive at St. Louis. By the time the birds reached Baltimore that August, Robert Purviance wrote from the port, the surviving magpie had eaten the other three on the passage. Jefferson had it and the prairie dog that autumn and sent both on to Charles Willson Peale's museum in Philadelphia.

What the plaque says

Lewis and Clark Memorial Bridge at Chamberlain Dedicated July 7, 1974 by Governor Richard F. Kneip Meriwether Lewis and William Clark with their party camped at several points near this crossing. In September 1804, continuous rain had soaked their gear. They stopped near Oacoma, above the mouth of American Crow Creek at a place they called "Camp Pleasant." Here, in warm and delightful weather, they rested, dried their equipment and repacked their boats. While here, Captain Lewis hunted, killing a buffalo and a magpie, a bird not known in the eastern states. The men ate delicious plums and found an abundance of acorns from burr oak, upon which they feasted. Lewis explored American Island noting "a large perportion of seeder" on it. The expedition returned to this area, homeward bound, in August 1806 after having journeyed into the unknown and immortality. Erected 1974 by the South Dakota Department of Transportation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dignity of Earth and Sky — steps away
  A fifty-foot stainless-steel Lakota woman on the bluff above the Missouri, her star quilt made of 128 blue diamonds that shiver in the wind.
• Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center — 2.8 mi
  A museum on the campus of a Catholic boarding school for Lakota children founded in 1927, built from gifts of the school's alumni and named to honor the people.

More markers nearby

• American Island — 2.0 mi
• Chamberlain — 2.0 mi
• Historic Highway - Brule — 3.0 mi
• White River — 11 mi