{"id":242,"slug":"fort-clark-state-historic-site-fort-clark-north-dakota","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Fort Clark is the village the steamboat killed — the Mandan earthlodge town of Mitu'tahakto's, built on the Missouri bluffs in 1822, where the women grew corn and beans and the men hunted bison, and where the American Fur Company planted its trading post in 1830. Francis Chardon's journal kept the record: the painters Catlin and Bodmer came through, the trade ran, and then on June 19, 1837, the steamboat St. Peters docked with smallpox aboard.","The epidemic took ninety percent of the Mandan in two months. The survivors abandoned the village in August and joined the Hidatsa upriver; the Arikara — themselves halved by the same plague — moved into the empty lodges in 1838 and held the site until cholera and pressure drove them out in 1861. The unplowed ground keeps everything: eighty-six lodge depressions, two trading posts, the fortification ditch, the cemetery, and the garden plots where a civilization ended in a single summer.","The file keeps Fort Clark: the Mandan village, the fur post, the St. Peters, and the ninety percent — the fur trade's most complete archaeological record and its most documented catastrophe.","Fort Clark is the archive's epidemic file — the earthlodges, the steamboat, and the village that the smallpox emptied."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Fort Clark is the archive's epidemic file — the Mandan village, the 1837 smallpox, and the unplowed site where the depressions are still readable.","A village emptied in a summer keeps its depressions — the file's suggestion being that Fort Clark's hold is the evidence: the lodges, the graves, and the journal that recorded the dying."]}],"name":"Fort Clark State Historic Site","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_SETTLEMENT","type_label":"Historic Settlement","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","ABANDONED_SETTLEMENT"],"groups":["dark-history","ghost-towns"],"desc":"Historic settlement associated with documented cultural history.","full_desc":"Fort Clark State Historic Site is a historic settlement in Fort Clark, North Dakota. Historic settlement associated with documented cultural history. HauntHunt files it with abandoned settlements and dark history. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Fort Clark","county":"Mercer","state":"North Dakota","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":47.31433,"lon":-101.88702,"coord_kind":"COUNTY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery pass. Earliest attestation, primary history, precise location and current access require independent enrichment.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":65,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"The site preserves a Mandan village and trading-post history. An 1837 smallpox epidemic devastated the community. A documented history gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that spine. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Fort Clark State Historic Site - History'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Fort Clark State Historic Site - History","url":"https://www.history.nd.gov/historicsites/clark/clarkhistory.html","publisher":"State Historical Society of North Dakota","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"admission_fee":"Free; donations welcome","operating_season":"Year-round; no snow removal","public_restroom":"true","last_verified_at":"2026-09-14T10:36:19+00:00","source":{"name":"Fort Clark State Historic Site - History","url":"https://www.history.nd.gov/historicsites/clark/clarkhistory.html","publisher":"State Historical Society of North Dakota","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},"sources":[{"name":"Fort Clark State Historic Site - History","url":"https://www.history.nd.gov/historicsites/clark/clarkhistory.html","publisher":"State Historical Society of North Dakota","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Fort Clark","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Clark","desc":"Topics referred to by the same term","extract":"Fort Clark can refer to the following locations in the United States, listed alphabetically by state:\n\nFort Clark Trading Post State Historic Site, North Dakota\nFort Clark, later Clarksville, Indiana\nFort Clark, built at 17th-century site of former Fort Crèvecoeur near Peoria, Illinois\nFort Osage (Fort Clark, Missouri), site of the Treaty of Fort Clark, ceding Osage Nation lands\nFort Clark, North Carolina, site of the Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries\nFort Clark, Texas, near Brackettville, Texas","img":null,"score":73},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}