Fort Thompson Mounds

The Fort Thompson Mounds are a complex of ancient burial and ceremonial mounds in Buffalo County, within the Crow Creek Reservation. They represent some of the most significant pre-contact archaeological sites in central South Dakota, associated with the cultures that inhabited the Missouri River valley long before European arrival. The mounds sit on higher ground above the Missouri — one of the reasons they survived the flooding that transformed this landscape in the 1960s.

The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visiting is a matter of basic respect as well as logistics: the mounds lie within reservation land belonging to the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, and you should inquire with the tribal office in Fort Thompson before wandering out to them. The landscape around the mounds has the particular stillness of a place that has absorbed a great deal of history — standing here, looking out over Lake Sharpe where the original river bottomland once was, gives context to the life that existed before the dam.

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A story
The original town of Fort Thompson — along with much of the surrounding lowland used by the Crow Creek Sioux for centuries — was permanently flooded when Big Bend Dam was completed in 1963. The Mounds survived on higher ground, but the community was displaced with compensation that most tribal members considered deeply inadequate. The dam project is still remembered on the reservation as a second dispossession.