A Place of Discovery Historic Fort Charrette Trading Post by Bob
McEowen Brown sits by the fire in the living quarters of his
restored 18th-century trading post, Fort Charrette, located near
Washington. Nearly 200 years ago Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark set forth on their historic Corps of Discovery exploration
of the Missouri River. Not far into the journey they stopped at
a small outpost near present-day Washington, Mo. In their
diaries the explorers recalled La Charrette as the last white
settlement Established in 1762 by French fur trader Joseph
Chadron, the fortified village is long gone, abandoned in the
floods of 1842-43. But a sense of La Charrette which literally
translates as "little wagon" lives on thanks to the efforts of
architectural historian Crosby Brown. Brown, who has restored
historic buildings throughout the United States, discovered the
remains of the old trading post in a farm field in the late
1960s and painstakingly relocated it to a site east of
Washington. Today, the restored tr