In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark

by Wallace G. Lewis

  Fig 2.9 Columbia River estuary, seen from a hill above Astoria, Oregon. The expedition followed the Washington shoreline when it arrived in early November 1805. On the left can be seen Chinook Point, on the distant horizon Cape Disappointment, and in the middle ground the Astoria Bridge connecting Oregon and Washington. Photo by Jeffrey Phillip Curry. Courtesy, Jeffrey Phillip Curry.

  Because of the nearly constant rainfall, everyone in Fort Clatsop became eager to leave the coastal range, even though they knew the high country of the Bitterroots would be impossible to cross before June because of the snowpack. On March 22, 1806, the expedition departed anyway, retracing its path up the Columbia. Moving past St. Helens, Oregon, and parallel to the route of Interstate 5, the party came upon a large river flowing from the south and entering the Columbia 142 miles upstream from its mouth, by Clark’s reckoning. [VII, 66] They had missed the mouth of the Multnomah River on the outward journey because it was screened by a long island. From this point, on April 2 Clark reported that he was able to view the snowcapped volcanic peaks of Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams in Washington and Mount Hood in Oregon. While Lewis and the main body set up camp near present-day Washougal, Washington, Clark led six men to take a look at the Multnomah River. They encountered several villages of Chinookian-speaking people within the environs of Portland before returning to the main camp on the Columbia. For most of the rest of April the expedition repeated the portages of the previous fall around the Cascades and The Dalles. Tempers grew short as they dealt with the demands of, and thefts by, the Indian bands that controlled them. The captains were determined to cover much of the return route to the Nez Perce by land, but a dwindling supply of trade goods made it difficult to obtain horses.

  On April 29, rather than continue up the Snake River, the Corps of Discovery struck out overland at the juncture of the Columbia and Walla Walla rivers, about thirty miles west of Walla Walla, Washington, to the Touchet River and through the sites of Prescott, Waitsburg, and Dayton, Washington. Lewis described the Touchet as “a bold Creek 10 yds. Wide,” its fertile bottom thick with cottonwood, birch, wild roses, and various berries, but the “surrounding plains,” he wrote, “are poor and sandy. The hills of the creek are generally abrupt and rocky.” [VII, 186–187] The nearly bare plain cut by tributaries flowing from the Blue Mountains to the south is now used primarily for dryland wheat farming. On May 3 they crossed the Tucannon River and proceeded along the valley of Pataha Creek to Pomeroy and down a steep gulch to the Snake River and its tributary, the Clearwater, west of Clarkston, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho. They marched up the north bank of the stream they had floated down the previous fall, crossed it at the mouth of Potlatch (“Colter’s”) Creek, then climbed up the south wall of the canyon downstream from the Canoe Camp site, on a rolling plateau called the Camas Prairie. This area south and west of the Clearwater River breaks is much like the Weippe Prairie from which the expedition had emerged the previous fall following the harrowing crossing of the Lolo Trail. Paralleling the main stem of the Clearwater, the party descended into the canyon by way of Lawyer Creek.

  Just across the Clearwater from Kamiah, Idaho, they set up Long Camp, where they would stay while they rounded up the horses they had left with the Nez Perce and waited for the snow level to drop in the towering Bitterroot Mountains to the east. In the meantime, Sergeant John Ordway led a small scouting expedition back west across the middle of the Camas Prairie to search for “Lewis’s River,” the Snake River south of Lewiston, and to bring back salmon for provisions. Ordway’s group left Long Camp on May 27 and crossed the route of Highway 95 between Craigmont and Ferdinand through Lawyer Creek Canyon, en route to Wild Goose Rapids on the Snake. On their return they skirted the Salmon River, which joins the Snake just a few miles south of Wild Goose Rapids. This was the river on which Clark had ventured downstream while looking for a way across Idaho from the Shoshone village near Salmon, Idaho. Ordway’s men had taken just three days to reach the Snake River, but they needed another week to complete the reconnaissance and return to Kamiah by way of Cottonwood. They generally followed Cottonwood Creek, north of Grangeville, down to the South Fork (Clearwater) Canyon to Stites, then north to Kooskia and Long Camp across the Clearwater River from Kamiah.

  In mid-June the Corps of Discovery, outfitted with supplies and horses, moved up out of Clearwater Canyon to the Weippe Prairie and the path the group had taken across the mountains in 1805. But on June 17 they had to turn back from “Hungery Creek” because snow banks still obscured the Lolo Trail. After obtaining the services of Nez Perce scouts, the group set out again. This time they easily made it along the ridges to Lolo Pass and down to the hot springs on Lolo Creek (“Traveler’s Rest Creek”), where they bathed and relaxed on June 29. A day later they emerged from the shadows of the Bitterroot Range and rejoined the Bitterroot River at Traveler’s Rest, where they split into two groups. Clark led the main body southward over Chief Joseph Pass into the Big Hole Valley and back down to Camp Fortunate, where the dugouts had been cached after the journey up the Missouri. Then the group retraced the outward-bound route down the Beaverhead and Jefferson rivers to the Three Forks.

  At the Three Forks Clark divided the men once again. Sergeant Ordway took one party down the Missouri River, northward, with the canoes. Clark and the remainder, including Sacagawea and her infant son, Jean Baptiste, went up the Gallatin River past the site of Bozeman, Montana, and over Bozeman Pass to the Yellowstone River at Livingston. At that point the Yellowstone River, flowing north from Yellowstone National Park, bends to the northeast. With difficulty, because they had insufficient horses and could find no adequate cottonwood trunks to make into dugouts, Clark’s group worked its way down the Yellowstone past Big Timber and Columbus. On July 20, 1806, near Laurel, Montana, just east of Billings, they finally found trees suitable for canoes. A few days later the group came to an unusual and noticeable sandstone tower, upon which Clark carved his name and the date. He named it Pompey’s Pillar, after the nickname he had bestowed on Jean Baptiste—“Little Pomp.” They continued on in late July and early August past the future sites of Miles City, Fallon, and Glendive, Montana. On August 3 Clark’s party camped at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, where they planned to reunite with Lewis’s group, which would be coming down the Missouri.20

  Fig 2.10 Vicinity of Long Camp, looking west across the Clearwater River to Kamiah, Idaho. Photo by Peg Owens. Courtesy, Idaho Department of Commerce.

  Fig 2.11 William Clark’s party, returning by way of the Yellowstone River in July 1806, came upon this monolith. Photo by Donnie Sexton. Courtesy, Travel Montana.

  Back at Traveler’s Rest, Meriwether Lewis—accompanied by Drouillard, the brothers Joseph and Reuben Field, Sergeant Patrick Gass, and Privates William Werner and Robert Frazer—had proceeded north a dozen or so miles along the Bitterroot River to the point where it empties into the Clark Fork River at Missoula, Montana. The men then turned east, passing through “Hellgate” gap from which the Clark Fork emerges. The Nez Perce scouts, who had left them at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers, had told the explorers that an easy overland shortcut would take them back to the Great Falls of the Missouri along a long-used route to buffalo hunting grounds. The route was so widely traveled that they could not miss the path. Following the Blackfoot River Canyon northeast from Bonner, Montana, the party emerged into the broad Blackfoot Valley on June 7. A few miles east of Lincoln, the buffalo road cut north to Alice Creek, which headed on the Continental Divide. North of Rogers Pass, where Highway 200 crosses the Divide, Lewis’s party reached a narrow saddle. Today it is known as Lewis and Clark Pass, although no roadway crosses over it. From the 7,452-foot elevation, the men could look out upon the prairies beyond the Great Falls. On the east side of the Divide they proceeded north to the Sun (“Medicine”) River near Augusta, which they followed due east to the White Island Camp south of Great Falls, the terminus of their portage route the previo
us July.

  In the first of two strokes of good timing, Sergeant Gass’s party, bringing the dugout canoes up the Missouri River, arrived at the same time. The second stroke of good timing occurred following a side trip Lewis, Drouillard, and the Field brothers made to explore the Marias River, which entered the Missouri downstream from Fort Benton. On July 16 the four men set out from the camp at the Great Falls north to the Marias River, which they followed upstream to Cut Bank Creek, passing the site of Cut Bank, Montana. On July 26 they stopped following the tributary at the location Lewis dubbed “Camp Disappointment,” since it was clear that the Marias River headwaters were not far to the north but rather in the near rampart of mountains, now part of Glacier National Park. After proceeding southwest to Two Medicine River (the Marias south fork), they encountered a group of Piegan Blackfoot warriors, who spent the night with them. In the morning Lewis and his men scuffled with the Piegans over a rifle and the horses. Two of the Blackfeet were killed. For the rest of the day and through the night, Lewis’s party fled toward the Missouri River, knowing the Piegans would return in force. En route, they passed the site of Conrad, Montana. On July 28 the four men were enormously relieved to reach the bank of the Missouri just in time to meet Sergeant Gass’s canoe party and be taken onboard.

  On August 7, 1806, Lewis, Gass, and their men arrived at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, just inside the present North Dakota border. A message there told them that William Clark and the rest of the expedition had moved downstream after waiting a week. Lewis followed, hampered by discomfort from an accidental gunshot wound in the buttocks.21 They caught up with Clark about thirty miles before reaching the mouth of the Little Missouri. The final leg of the journey, from Fort Mandan to St. Louis, went relatively quickly. What had taken the initial expedition party the entire summer of 1804, traveling upstream, passed by at a clip of nearly eighty miles per day when they were going downstream. By September 23 they were back in St. Louis.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The New Explorers

  AS CHAPTER 2 INDICATES, most of Lewis and Clark’s path from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back follows, crosses, or closely parallels the highway system that developed during the 1920s and 1930s. Easy automobile access to the trail may help account for its growing popularity; by the mid-twentieth century it began to upstage the expedition personnel in the public’s historical consciousness.

  Reinvigorating the historical memory of a western trail was not new, nor was associating it with a designated highway route. The Oregon Trail, for example, had become celebrated by the 1920s, largely through the efforts of Ezra Meeker. Meeker, who had come over the Oregon Trail in 1852, devoted his later years to building public recognition of its historical significance. In 1906–1907 he drove a wagon back over the route all the way to Washington, D.C., where he lobbied the government for funds to adequately mark the trail. He failed to get the funding, but his odyssey attracted attention in communities along the way, most of which were inspired to create historical markers.1

  Lewis and Clark’s trail eventually attracted attention for many of the same reasons and, as we shall see, inspired similar attempts to commemorate the route through designated highways in its name. The Corps of Discovery’s 1803–1806 route and its many sites became the central “hero” of the exploration narrative. For many enthusiasts, the most inspiring and appropriate way to commemorate Lewis and Clark has been to follow in their footsteps, to personally trace as much of the route as possible while relating journal entries to segments of the countryside. Lewis and Clark aficionados go further than tourists by studying maps and attempting to pin down the locations of expedition campsites. In general, however, the practice of retracing the route is closely related to the development and effects of transportation in the West, particularly long-distance highways and automobile tourism. The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, created during the 1970s, came into being in part because tourists in automobiles became, in a sense, the new explorers of the West.

  The tradition of following in Lewis and Clark’s footsteps dates back to the turn of the twentieth century and Olin D. Wheeler’s two-volume book, The Trail of Lewis and Clark. In the late 1870s Wheeler served as a topographer for John Wesley Powell’s survey of the Colorado Plateau. By 1892 he had become a publicist and was named chief advertising executive for the Northern Pacific Railway, where he apparently began to view history as a way to promote tourism. Wheeler researched and wrote about the economic development the railroad sparked in the West, as well as historical lore accessible to travelers along the Northern Pacific route from Minnesota to the Pacific Coast. For example, as the author of the Northern Pacific’s annual travel magazine, Wonderland, Wheeler offered colorful narrative and descriptions of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which occurred not far south of the Northern Pacific line through southern Montana. He was next drawn to the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a saga associated even more with the geography traversed by the company’s tracks.2

  To prepare a separate chapter on Lewis and Clark for the 1900 issue of Wonderland, Wheeler set out “to more particularly visit many places that were important and critical points in their exploration.” In his preface to The Trail of Lewis and Clark, Wheeler stated that one of his purposes was to show that tourists routinely failed to connect the areas through which they traveled with the explorations of Lewis and Clark. Closely relating sites and landmarks tourists visited to passages in the journals, Wheeler attempted to match them with the geographic features he encountered, the names of which had frequently changed from those the explorers assigned—in short, to connect “the exploration with the present time.” Armed with a print copy of the journals and accompanied by various photographers he engaged along the way, Wheeler spent at least four years traveling the route by train, steamboat, and horseback. Clearly, more than the promotion of tourism was at stake. Wheeler had turned into a hard-core buff, willing to take great pains to document the Corps of Discovery’s trail. Now, however, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as individual makers of history—in what was long regarded as the “Great Man” view—were superseded by a re-experiencing of the historic journey.3

  Wheeler collected so much data that he eventually expanded the feature article into a two-volume book, written to increase public understanding of the expedition for its centennial celebration. Locally hired photographers contributed 100 pictures showing locations along the trail a century after Lewis and Clark passed through. Wheeler walked, rode, and sailed the entire length of the trail but did not confine himself to the Corps of Discovery’s exploits. His book offers background on the practices of various Indian peoples encountered along the route, as well as later nineteenth-century historical events. Wheeler also describes and extols evidence of changes in the land since the time of Lewis and Clark as a result of settlement and economic development. Later enthusiasts following the same path decried rather than extolled the changes, however, and an environmental ethic was behind the mid–twentieth-century push to establish a national trail. Still, The Trail of Lewis and Clark is a clear landmark in public thinking about the expedition, the beginning of a slow shift away from the focus on individual frontier “heroism” toward a focus on the trail and its significant locations. Wheeler provides maps that feature particular segments of the route, as well as foldouts showing the trails in relation to railroad lines. Having originally intended to increase the historical awareness of travelers on the Northern Pacific, Wheeler eventually undertook an examination of portions of the trail far from the view of train tourists.4

  Between 1898 and 1902, as one example, Wheeler set out to trace the expedition’s September 1805 crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho and Montana, perhaps the most dangerous passage of the expedition. The Corps of Discovery followed the Lolo Trail, a pathway the Nez Perce Indians used for traveling to buffalo country in Montana. At the east end of the trail was Lolo Pass; to the west, the trail followed high mountain ridges and cr
ossed deep side canyons to emerge onto a rolling prairie. Later, Captain John Mullan, who built a wagon road from Walla Walla in Washington Territory to Fort Benton on the Missouri River in the mid-1850s, rejected Lolo Pass in favor of one further north (Lookout Pass) for crossing the Bitterroot Range. “Of all the sections of the Bitter Root Mountain chain,” Mullan stated in an 1861 speech to the Historical Society of the Rocky Mountains, “there is no doubt in my own mind but that Lewis and Clark crossed by the most difficult section. The whole region for miles in every direction is one immense sea of rugged, frowning mts. & once in them your condition is well likened to that of the sea wrecked mariner tossed from one mt. to another.”5 In Mullan’s opinion, the explorers had chosen this route at “the instigation” of Indians, who presumably wanted to impede their progress. For Wheeler, tracing Lewis and Clark’s route by way of the Lolo Trail proved the most difficult and time-consuming task of those he undertook, in part because in 1898 it remained almost as close to being wilderness as it was nearly a century earlier.

  As was the case with the White Cliffs portion of the Lewis and Clark route on the Missouri River upstream from Fort Benton, Montana, the crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains offered Wheeler no access by way of railroad lines. In addition, no roadway paralleled the Lolo passage before the 1930s. Various attempts had been made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to build track over this portion of the Bitterroot barrier, but nothing came of them. In 1887 engineer C. C. Van Arsdol, who reconnoitered numerous railroad routes in Canada and the western United States, undertook a survey of a path over the Bitterroots between Lewiston and Missoula for a regional line apparently allied with the Oregon Railway and Navigation (OR&N) Company. This was a time, Van Arsdol’s son wrote, “when there was considerable publicity about what appeared to be a struggle between the major railroads for control of the Mullan Pass and the Coeur d’Alene mining section” to the north. No construction resulted, but by the end of the century railway companies were once again squaring off over the region between Clearwater Canyon and western Montana. Tracks had been laid into the canyon about ten miles upstream from Lewiston in 1898, thereby tying Lewiston to the Northern Pacific system and to Spokane, Washington. Once again, the OR&N sent a survey group into the Bitterroots. Van Arsdol, now leading a Northern Pacific crew, followed. A Yakima, Washington, newspaper characterized the struggle as “one of the most bitter railroad wars ever waged in this country.”6