Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site
Historic Site · Stanton, North Dakota
The remains of three Hidatsa earthlodge villages above the Knife River near its mouth on the Missouri, where several hundred circular depressions are still visible in the grass. This was one of the great trading centres of the northern plains for centuries before Europeans reached it, and Lewis and Clark wintered a few miles downstream in 1804 among these people. Sakakawea, the Shoshone woman taken captive as a girl and brought here, was living at Awatixa when the expedition arrived.
County Road 37, Stanton, North Dakota, 58571, United States
FREE and open daily year round, with the grounds and trails open dawn to dusk and the visitor centre generally 8 AM to 4:30 PM, extended in summer. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Cultural demonstrations and ranger programmes run seasonally and are free. ⚠ THE VILLAGE DEPRESSIONS ARE ONLY VISIBLE IN LOW LIGHT - come within a couple of hours of sunrise or sunset, or you will walk across three villages and see flat grass. The National Park Service publishes a PO box for this site; the entrance is on County Road 37 north of Stanton and is signed from the highway.
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