Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, Where Lewis and Clark Buried a Man

In August of eighteen oh four, the Corps of Discovery lost its only member who would not return home. Sergeant Charles Floyd fell gravely ill along the Missouri River, almost certainly from a ruptured appendix, and died on August twentieth. The expedition buried him with full military honors on a high bluff overlooking the river and named it Floyd's Bluff. That bluff is what gives Sergeant Bluff, Iowa its name.

The town itself was formally platted as Sergeant's Bluff City on November twentieth, eighteen fifty-four, becoming the first formally platted town in Woodbury County. It served briefly as the county seat before Sioux City took that role in an eighteen fifty-seven election. Today a one-hundred-foot sandstone obelisk erected in nineteen oh one marks Floyd's grave near modern Sioux City, and the town just to the south still carries the sergeant's name.