Pierre, South Dakota, Midpoint of a Continent
Near Pierre, South Dakota
Pierre, pronounced "peer" by South Dakotans, is the state capital and sits near the geographic center of South Dakota. The town was founded in eighteen eighty on the east bank of the Missouri River as the western end of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, named for the fur trader Pierre Chouteau Junior, whose family had long operated on this stretch of the Missouri. When South Dakota became a state in eighteen eighty-nine, Pierre was named temporary capital, and a popular vote in eighteen ninety made it permanent, narrowly beating the city of Huron.
Lewis and Clark camped in this vicinity in eighteen oh four and eighteen oh six. With fewer than fifteen thousand residents, Pierre is one of the least-populated state capitals in the country, a prairie city defined by the river and the dome of its capitol.
