The Cultural Heritage Center
Near Pierre, South Dakota
The South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre houses the state's most important historical collection, and its prize possession is a sheet of lead that French explorers buried in a frozen hillside in seventeen forty-three. The Verendrye Plate, as it is known, was underground for a hundred and seventy years before a group of schoolchildren accidentally found it in nineteen thirteen. Alongside the plate, the center holds thousands of artifacts from the state's Native American nations, its fur trade era, its homesteading period, and its long relationship with the Missouri River.
The building itself opened in nineteen eighty-nine. If you have an hour in Pierre, this is where to spend it.
