Qualla: Verendrye National Monument

Verendrye National Monument: Introduction

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

History has a way of correcting its corrections. In 1917, the United States designated Crow Flies High Butte as a national monument, commemorating the spot where the sons of French-Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Verendrye, supposedly climbed to survey the unknown West in 1742. In 1956, scholars decided the location was wrong and the monument was abolished. Then, decades later, new research suggested the original site might have been correct after all. By then, much of the surrounding land had vanished beneath the waters of Lake Sakakawea. The butte still rises above the North Dakota plains within the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, a monument to uncertainty itself.

Verendrye National Monument: The Father's Quest for the Western Sea

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes was obsessed with finding what he called the Western Ocean, a route from the Great Lakes to the Pacific that would give France control of the continent's interior. Between 1731 and 1737, he built trading posts stretching from Lake Superior to Lake Winn...

Verendrye National Monument: Brothers at the Edge of the Known World

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1742, two of Verendrye's sons, probably Louis-Joseph and Francois, mounted another expedition to the Missouri. Their journals describe landscapes and encounters with Native peoples, but the difficulty of identifying specific places and tribal names has left historians debating...

Verendrye National Monument: The Butte That Dominates the Plains

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Crow Flies High Butte rises from the surrounding grasslands in southwestern Mountrail County, west of New Town. From its summit, the entire Little Missouri Valley spreads below, making it an ideal vantage point for anyone surveying unknown territory. The North Dakota state histor...

Verendrye National Monument: Abolished and Submerged

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Later scholarship challenged the identification. The Verendrye journals were too vague, critics argued, to pinpoint any specific location. On July 30, 1956, the site was officially withdrawn as a national monument and transferred to the State of North Dakota. Within years, the Ga...

Verendrye National Monument: What the Butte Still Sees

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Verendrye National Monument no longer exists as a federal unit, but Crow Flies High Butte remains, rising within the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation now holds this land, the same Mandan people Verendrye first encountered in 1738. Lake Sak...