Fort Atkinson, Nebraska

Among the many donations of money, materials and time to the reconstruction of Fort Atkinson, none has a more curious connection with the founding of the original fort than does that made by the Plum Creek Timber Company of Columbia Falls, Montana, and its parent corporation, the Burlington Northern Railroad.

During their 1804-1806 expedition, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled thousands of miles, following the Missouri to its source in Montana and beyond. In 1804, they held a council with Missouri and Oto Indians on the site where Fort Atkinson was established 15 years later.

Reaching what is now western Montana in 1805, they traveled through forests now managed by the Plum Creek Company; 180 years later, logs and lumber from that forest are being used in the reconstruction of the fort on the site of Lewis and Clark's Council Bluff. It is conceivable that some of these trees were mere saplings when Lewis and Clark walked through that forest.

The Plum Creek Company has donated some 500,000 board feet of pine logs and 200,000 board feet of pine lumber for the restoration project. The original fort was built of native cottonwood and walnut, but the use of these original woods was not feasible; even the purchase of this much western pine was a daunting prospect, and transportation costs would have greatly added to the difficulty of so extensive a reconstruction. Thus the gift of this lumber and its transportation from "Lewis and Clark's forest" in Montana to "Lewis and Clark's Council Bluff" in Nebraska is both a generous gift and one with a unique story behind it.