First Bride's Grave

On a lonely hilltop above South Ravine Park lies the woman remembered as Sioux City's first bride. Her name was Rosalie Menard, the daughter of a French Canadian fur trader named Louis Menard and his Native wife. In eighteen fifty-three, when she was only about fifteen, Rosalie married Joseph Leonais, a French Canadian pioneer roughly twice her age. The couple had four children. Rosalie died in eighteen sixty-five, in her late twenties, shortly after the birth of her fourth child.

For the one hundredth anniversary of her birth, the Woodbury County Pioneer Club climbed this ridge in nineteen thirty-eight and raised a monument over her grave. Some have quibbled with the title, noting she married before Sioux City formally existed. But the stone still stands, a quiet tribute reached only by a steep trail.