Fort Pierre: The Town That Kept the Name
Near Pierre, South Dakota
Fort Pierre, the small city across the Missouri from the state capital, takes its name from the old trading post that stood nearby in the eighteen hundreds. It is technically older than Pierre proper, tracing its roots to the eighteen seventeen founding of a fur trading post at this bend of the river. While Pierre grew up around the railroad terminus on the east bank, Fort Pierre retained its identity as a separate community on the west.
Today it is home to around two thousand people, a handful of shops, the Verendrye Museum holding artifacts from the early fur trade era, and the granite monument marking the bluff where the Verendrye brothers buried their lead plate in seventeen forty-three. It is one of those small Missouri River towns that carries more history per square mile than its size would suggest.
