Trail Horses for Sale near Fort Pierre, SD

About Fort Pierre, SD

On March 30, 1743, Francois and Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye reached the area of present-day Fort Pierre during an expedition west from Quebec, a French colony in present-day Canada. They left a lead plate buried in a hill to claim the land for the King of France. In the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the United States acquired this area and the remainder of France's vast territory west of the Mississippi River. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition in 1804 to explore the territory, especially by traveling west to the Upper Missouri and Platte rivers, in the hope of finding a water route to the Pacific Ocean. They met with the Teton Sioux on the south side of the mouth of the Bad River on 24–28 September 1804.