Trempealeau — Thirteen Thousand Years on the Bluffs

The village of Trempealeau occupies a bluff above the Mississippi that people have returned to for thousands of years, and the archaeology here shows long occupation by Native peoples.

The name comes from the French trempe a l'eau, meaning soaked in water or dipped in water, a description of the detached limestone hill, now an island in the Mississippi, that French traders saw rising from the flood plain. French explorer Nicolas Perrot established one of the earliest European encampments on the upper Mississippi near here. European-American settlement did not arrive until the mid-nineteenth century. On the higher ground above the village, mounds of the Mississippian Culture have been studied by archaeologists, who have found evidence of Mississippian settlement.