Pierre Gaultier de Varennes was obsessed with finding what he called the Western Ocean, a route from the Great Lakes to the Pacific that would give France control of the continent's interior. Between 1731 and 1737, he built trading posts stretching from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg, assisted by his four sons and a nephew. In December 1738, he and his son Francois traveled southwest into what is now North Dakota, reaching a Mandan village a day's journey from the Missouri River. They were the first Europeans known to enter this territory. Along the way, Verendrye established Fort Rouge and Fort La Reine in present-day Manitoba, extending French influence deep into the heart of North America.

In 1742, two of Verendrye's sons, probably Louis-Joseph and Francois, mounted another expedition to the Missouri. Their journals describe landscapes and encounters with Native peoples, but the difficulty of identifying specific places and tribal names has left historians debating their exact route for centuries. What seems certain is that they traveled farther west than any European before them, and they may have been the first to view the Rocky Mountains. This was more than sixty years before Lewis and Clark followed roughly the same corridor with far more fanfare. The Verendrye brothers left a lead plate claiming the territory for France, discovered near Pierre, South Dakota in 1913.

Crow Flies High Butte rises from the surrounding grasslands in southwestern Mountrail County, west of New Town. From its summit, the entire Little Missouri Valley spreads below, making it an ideal vantage point for anyone surveying unknown territory. The North Dakota state historical society believed this was where the Verendrye brothers climbed in 1742-43, and in 1917 they convinced the federal government to proclaim it a national monument. A bronze plaque was installed commemorating the discovery of this area by the Sons of Verendrye, celebrated French explorer. The designation made it one of the more obscure units of the national monument system, commemorating not a battle or natural wonder but a moment of observation.

Later scholarship challenged the identification. The Verendrye journals were too vague, critics argued, to pinpoint any specific location. On July 30, 1956, the site was officially withdrawn as a national monument and transferred to the State of North Dakota. Within years, the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River created Lake Sakakawea, flooding much of the original monument area. The irony is that subsequent research has suggested Crow Flies High Butte may indeed be the correct site where the brothers climbed to view the Little Missouri Valley. The monument was abolished based on uncertainty, and the uncertainty was later resolved in favor of the original identification, but by then the designation was gone and the land partly underwater.

Verendrye National Monument no longer exists as a federal unit, but Crow Flies High Butte remains, rising within the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation now holds this land, the same Mandan people Verendrye first encountered in 1738. Lake Sakakawea stretches across the landscape, erasing some of what the explorers saw while creating something new. The butte still offers the same commanding view that drew two French-Canadian brothers to climb it nearly three centuries ago, looking west toward mountains they may or may not have been the first Europeans to see. Some histories remain permanently uncertain, and this windswept height in North Dakota commemorates that truth.