Thursday, January 04, 2007

Vote for Pvt. George Shannon in Yankton SD Name the Bridge Contest

The Yankton, South Dakota area has a www.namethebridge.com contest to rename a 1924 bridge which is being turned into a bicycling and pedestrian trail across the Missouri River to northeastern Nebraska. The contest runs through the month of January. George Shannon is one of the ten choices for the bridge naming. Shannon was the youngest member of the expedition. He went onto a distinguished career as a lawyer and Kentucky state legislator in later life, but he is best known for getting lost in the area of northeastern Nebraska and southeastern South Dakota in the fall of 1804. Read more about Shannon at the Shannon Trail website. Shannon has been the subject of one of the best tourism marketing efforts along the entire Lewis and Clark Trail. Sixteen communities and two Indian tribes, the Santee Sioux and Ponca, have banded together  at www.shannontrail.com to encourage visitors to visit northeastern Nebraska. 

Hand carved wooden statues of George have been placed around their towns, located in the beautiful rolling hills (called the Czech Alps) in the Niobrara and Missouri River valleys. The Shannon Trail takes a leisurely two days to drive if you want to locate the statues.Lewis and Clark Road Trips contains over 25 destinations in the area where the Missouri River bends west and then heads north again into South Dakota. Special area attractions include the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center at Calumet Bluff near Yankton; the National Music Museum in Vermillion, SD with over 10,000 musical instruments from around the world; and the Ashfall Fossil Beds in Royal, NE, called the “Pompeii of Prehistoric Animals” because the skeletons are preserved intact in rounded forms.One of the prettiest places to camp or visit is Niobrara State Park at the confluence of the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers in Niobrara, NE. Buy Lewis and Clark Road Trips through its Amazon Affiliate bookstore.The bookstore contains the “Top 50 Books on Lewis and Clark.” To learn more about George Shannon read The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition by Larry E. Morris (published by Yale University in 2004).

Posted by Kira Gale on 01/04/2007 at 10:08 AM

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