Historical Marker · No. 280
Steamboat Reach
Hughes County · South Dakota
Erected by Explorer Scout Post No. 175 and State Historical Society, 1960
The crowd at the finish line was the freight crews. From 1876, steamboats landed Black Hills cargo at Fort Pierre, where it went onto ox-drawn wagons for the two hundred miles to Deadwood. The drivers were bullwhackers, named for the whacking that kept the oxen moving, and some of them were women. A boat first up the reach was first to the warehouses. The river's share of that trade shrank after the Chicago and North Western rails reached Pierre on November 3, 1880 and freight began crossing by ferry.
What the plaque says
Steamboat Reach From Ft. George Island to the Ft. Pierre levee was 16 miles of straight river known as "steamboat reach." Here, after wooding up, was an ideal place for a boat race and with exhaust valves tied down they raced from Antelope Creek to the levee to the delight and shouting of the pioneer bullwhackers. Erected 1960 by Explorer Scout Post No. 175 and State Historical Society
Where it stands
44.36940, -100.36226 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- South Dakota State Capitol — 0.8 miA 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.
- Verendrye Monument — 1.4 miThe 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.
- Oahe Dam — 5.9 miOne 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.