Pompeys Pillar with Clark inscription
— — the only signature the expedition left in stone.
Not only on a wall.
“A two-hundred-foot sandstone butte standing alone above the Yellowstone River, twenty-eight miles northeast of Billings. On July 25, 1806, on the return leg of the expedition, William Clark climbed it, named it for Sacagawea's young son, and carved his name and the date into the soft rock. The inscription is the only physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery still in place on the trail. It is protected now under glass, on the face it has always been.
Pompeys Pillar with Clark inscription, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pompeys Pillar is an isolated sandstone butte rising about one hundred fifty feet above the south bank of the Yellowstone River, roughly twenty-eight miles northeast of Billings, Montana. The site is a National Monument administered by the Bureau of Land Management, covering about fifty-one acres. William Clark passed through on July 25, 1806, on the return leg of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, climbed the rock, and named it Pompy's Tower after Sacagawea's son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, whom Clark nicknamed Pomp. The name was later modified to Pompeys Pillar.
The rock is Eagle Sandstone, a soft Cretaceous formation deposited about eighty million years ago when the Western Interior Seaway covered the region. The same soft surface that took Clark's signature held petroglyphs from the Crow, the Cheyenne, and earlier Plains peoples — some of which remain on the lower walls. Clark's signature reads W. Clark July 25 1806 and is the only known on-trail physical evidence of the Corps of Discovery still in its original location. It has been protected under a glass cover since the 1950s.
The monument is reached from Exit 23 off Interstate 94, about a half-hour drive from Billings. A boardwalk of roughly two hundred steps climbs the rock to the inscription and continues to the summit, where the view runs out across the Yellowstone River valley. The visitor centre and grounds are open daily from late May through September; the gate stays open year-round for foot access at no charge when the centre is closed. Entry is around seven dollars per vehicle in season. Allow about an hour.