Following the instructions of President Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off across the continent in 1804 to explore the vast territory recently acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase. Part of their mission was to find a viable trade route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
Sharing command of what was officially known as the Corps of Discovery, which included 33 soldiers and experienced “mountain men,” plus the legendary Sacagawea, her husband Toussaint Charbonneau, and their infant Pomp, not to mention Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, Seaman, Lewis and Clark blazed a route up the Missouri River, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and made their way west down the Columbia River, returning to St. Louis after two and a half years and over 8,000 miles of unprecedented travel.
Along with their copious journals, many good books have been written documenting the Lewis and Clark expedition and tracing their route, which has been declared the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Much of the land they traversed has been altered beyond recognition, though thanks to recent bicentennial celebrations, numerous historic sights along the way have been preserved or protected as parks or museums. The best of these are:
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is an excellent museum underneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
In Sioux Falls, the Floyd Monument is a stone obelisk marking the grave of the only expedition member to lose his life, from appendicitis.
On-a-Slant Indian Village has been reconstructed atop the remains of a Mandan village.
Fort Mandan, where the expedition spent the winter of 1804–05, has been reconstructed downstream from the original site.
Knife River Indian Village National Historic Site, along the banks of the Missouri River, holds the remains of the Hidatsa village where Sacagawea lived before joining the Corps of Discovery.
Lemhi Pass, on the Idaho/Montana border, is where the expedition first crossed the Continental Divide.
The River of No Return is an impassable portion of the Salmon River.
Traveler’s Rest, in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula, was such an idyllic spot that the Corps of Discovery camped here on both the outbound and return legs of their journey.
Fort Canby, overlooking the mouth of the Columbia River, has a small museum on the spot where the expedition first saw the Pacific Ocean.
Fort Clatsop, a full-scale reconstruction of the wooden fort where the expedition spent a miserable winter in 1805–06, sits in lush forest along the Oregon coast.
Tillamook Head, rising high above the Pacific Ocean, is the farthest point the expedition reached.
