American Island

On Sept. 17, 1804, Lewis & Clark camped on the west bank below the Island and passing it on the 18th said: “Passed an Island about the middle of the river at 1 mile this island is about a mile long and has a great prepotion of Red cedar on it.” In 1811 the Astorians called it Little Cedar and in 1843 Audubon called it Great Cedar Island.

In 1855 Lt. Warren, western topographer, called it 2nd Cedar Island and so it appeared on Colton’s 1857 Atlas. Dakota Surveys of 1875 showed it but did not name it and it was Andrea’s Atlas of 1884 that first called it American or Cedar Island. March 2, 1889 Congress gave it to the City of Chamberlain as a park.

By 1911 the channel on the west side was closed when the Milwaukee made a fill. For many years it was connected to the East bank by a pontoon bridge and in 1905 by a railroad pile and barge bridge which was converted to steel in 1918. The State Highway bridge (the piers still show upstream) was built in 1925 and golf course, race track, athletic field and picnic grounds were developed by Chamberlain and used until the waters of Fort Randall Dam covered it in 1953.

Well timbered, it was a stopping place for explorers, fur traders, steamboat men and recreationers for a century and a half and is now only a memory for the generations who made such good use of it. Fort Aux Cedres and Pilcher’s Factory or Ft. Recovery used it as a woodlot, farm and pasture in the 1820s.