On the Missouri River bluffs west of Washburn, this site preserves the remains of a Mandan village founded in 1822, later occupied by the Arikara, alongside two nineteenth-century trading posts. Fort Clark, established in 1830 by James Kipp for the American Fur Company, became part of the upper Missouri river trade and drew notable visitors including George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, and Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied. The community suffered catastrophic losses after smallpox arrived in 1837, followed by later cholera and another smallpox outbreak, and it was abandoned permanently after a Dakota attack in 1861. Its surviving earthworks, lodge depressions, ruins, and graves make it an important record of trade, cultural exchange, and epidemic devastation.