Places to Visit in North Dakota

Fort Mandan is a High Potential Historic Site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. On November 2, 1804, the expedition came to the place where they built their winter quarters. Lewis wrote, “This place we have named Fort Mandan in honour of our Neighbours.”

Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, which they had known about from Mandan people, in April 1805.

Sacagawea is one of the most famous women in American history. She lived at a Hidatsa village near here.

Pierre Cruzatte accidentally shot Meriwether Lewis near here, mistaking him for an elk.

Mandan and Hidatsa people hosted Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the men accompanying them over the winter of 1804–1805. Their many connections with people living up and down the Missouri River were incredibly important to the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

On February 11, 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to a baby boy. She and her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, named him Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.

Sacagawea and her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition from their home in Mandan and Hidatsa villages.

The Northern Plains National Heritage Area amplifies the nationally important heritage that flows from the Missouri River in central North Dakota. This includes the interconnected stories of explorers and settlers, tribal citizens, origins of various agrarian lifeways, and the expansion of the United States reflected within this lived-in landscape.

Yellowstone River Confluence is a High Potential Historic Site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. On April 25, 1805, Lewis, “accompanyed by four men”, proceeded overland in advance of Clark and the main group in order to explore the area surrounding the confluence of the Yellowstone River, which he knew to be close.

The Corps of Discovery lived at Fort Mandan for about 22 weeks during the winter of 1804-05. So it seems fitting that today an impressive Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center shares the story of the Expedition in central North Dakota, in the vicinity of the Native villages. In Washburn, North Dakota, the Interpretive Center explains how this area was once the crossroads of culture and commerce on the Northern Plains.