“Fur Posts”

1817-1868

For half a century, the area near the Mouth of Bad River was one of America’s Fur Capitals. There were ten fur posts here over the years. In 1805 Lewis & Clark’s reports of the richness of the fur trade on the Missouri was causing a turmoil and in 1808 John Jacob Astor formed the American Fur Company which was to become America’s biggest business.

In 1821 Joseph Renville, William Laidlaw, Kenneth McKenzie, all British subjects, with Daniel Lamont, an American partner, form Tilton & Company usually known as the Columbia Fur Co. and the next year built FORT TECUMSEH, named for the famous Shawnee chief, whom Renville knew, on the west bank of the Missouri, than an open channel, about a mile above Bad River, within a few rods of this marker. It was sold by Columbia to the Upper Missouri Outfit, a subsidiary of the American Fur Company in 1827 and because of the encroachment of the river was moved 1¾ miles N and renamed Ft. Pierre Chouteau in 1832. In 1831 the ‘Yellowstone,' first steamboat on the Missouri, came up as far as Ft. Tecumseh.

In 1833 Sublette & Campbell had a trade post in ‘opposition’ a little south of the site.

When Pierre was the world’s largest shipping point for cattle, this area was the holding grounds and a few rods upstream was the railroad company’s pile bridge to Marions Island from where the ferries took them over the river.

Stanley County, Fort Pierre Historic turnout (2006)