The Continental Divide

The two emblems on this disc are the argument. One face carries the Great Seal of the United States, the other the royal arms of Britain, because the line it marks was once a frontier between empires. Water north of it runs to Hudson Bay, the basin Charles II granted to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670 as Rupert's Land, which reached into present Minnesota and the Dakotas. Water south runs to the Mississippi. The Convention of 1818 swapped that drainage boundary for the 49th parallel, and the land here became American by treaty, not by watershed.

What the plaque says

The Continental Divide between Hudson Bay and Gulf of Mexico Erected 1957 by Ray S. Jarrett and Sons

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Sisseton Historic State Park — 14 mi
  A stone fort on the Coteau des Prairies built to watch the Dakota after 1862, renamed for the Sisseton who scouted for it, restored by the WPA and saved again by a boy who grew up loving it.

More markers nearby

• Frank Farrar: 24th Governor of South Dakota — 0.3 mi
• Fort Wadsworth 1864 Fort Sisseton 1876 — 11 mi
• Charles H. Sheldon — 20 mi
• Daly Corners — 24 mi