Elk Point: First Vote West of the Mississippi

When the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped near present-day Elk Point on August twenty-second, eighteen oh four, they were two days removed from grief. Sergeant Charles Floyd had died of what historians now believe was a ruptured appendix, the only fatality of the entire journey.

Captain Clark called a vote to replace him. Three men were nominated: William Bratton, Patrick Gass, and George Gibson. Gass won with nineteen of twenty-seven votes. It was an unremarkable election by any measure, except for one thing: it was the first recorded election in the Louisiana Purchase.

Elk Point itself was formally settled in eighteen fifty-nine, became the Union County seat in eighteen sixty-five, and today sits just off Interstate Twenty-Nine near the South Dakota-Nebraska line.