Moniteau Creek at Manitou Bluffs

Manitou Bluffs

Quick Facts

MANAGED BY:

Katy Trail State Park, Missouri State Parks

Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums

This map shows a range of features associated with the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which commemorates the 1803-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. The trail spans a large portion of the North American continent, from the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. The trail is comprised of the historic route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, an auto tour route, high potential historic sites (shown in black), visitor centers (shown in orange), and pivotal places (shown in green). These features can be selected on the map to reveal additional information. Also shown is a base map displaying state boundaries, cities, rivers, and highways. The map conveys how a significant area of the North American continent was traversed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and indicates the many places where visitors can learn about their journey and experience the landscape through which they traveled.

Moniteau Creek at Manitou Bluffs is a High Potential Historic Site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.

After setting out early on the morning of June 7, 1804, Clark noted that the expedition stopped for “brack­fast at the Mouth of a large Creek on the S. S. of 30 yds wide Called big Monetou.” He documented that a “Short distance above the mouth of this Creek, is Several Courious Paintings and Carveing in the projecting rock of Limestone inlade with white red & blue flint, of a verry good quallity, the Indians have taken of this flint great quantities. We landed at this Inscription and found it a Den of rattle Snakes, we had not landed 3 minutes before three verry large Snakes wer observed on the Crevises of the rocks & Killed— at the mouth of the last mentioned Creek Capt. Lewis took four or five men & went to Some Licks or Springs of Salt water from two to four miles up the Creek on Rt. Side.”

Manitou and Moniteau are variations on the Algonquian name for the Great Spirit. The eponymous creek and limestone bluffs were likely first so-named by early European explorers due to pictographic represen­tations of the Manitou and other related symbols. The construction of a tunnel for the Missouri–Kansas– Texas Railroad in the 1890s obliterated a large segment of the bluff along the west side of Moniteau Creek. Although the pictographs described by Clark at this location are no longer extant, there are preserved examples about four miles downriver at Torbett Spring. The Manitou Bluffs area is publicly accessible via the Katy Trail State Park at Rocheport.