Located at Beautiful Lake DeSmet, Buffalo, Wyoming - Take I-90 Exit 51 ▪ Phone:307-684-9051

Lake DeSmet got its name from Father Jean DeSmet, a Jesuit priest missionary from Termonde, Belgium. He came to the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain area in 1840 from St. Louis, Missouri. He was the first recorded Catholic priest in the Bighorns area.



Father DeSmet got around so much and so safely in troubled lands, that even a river boat was named after him.  He traveled throughout the Rockies in order to introduce the local native peoples to Christianity.
                                        
DeSmet was also given authority by the Grant Administration's Peace Commissioners to carry out peace negotiations with the Sioux. DeSmet met Sitting Bull in June 1868. An army officer, James Burns, claimed that "no white man has ever come close to equaling his universal appeal to the Indian."


The talks were very successful and representatives of the Sioux agreed to sign a peace treaty at Fort Laramie. Pierre-Jean DeSmet died on 23rd May, 1873.

                                  Father DeSmet at the Lake