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Lewis and Clark National and State Historical Parks |
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Written On: May/June 2006 |
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Written By: by Charles Henry Thomas |
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Two hundred years ago, a motley band of explorers wandered out of the Idaho and Montana wilderness near starvation. It was early October 1805 and they'd already slogged through snow, fought their way through thick underbrush, crawled over downed timber, and endured the freezing cold of high Rocky Mountain nights.
A month later, they arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River still cold, wet and hungry. They desperately needed a spot to regroup and resupply before heading back to St. Louis. Instead, they found themselves short of food and shivering on the Washington side of the Columbia. The site near today's Astoria-Megler bridge, the mammoth 4.1 mile span over the mighty Columbia River connecting Washington and Oregon, was appropriately called the Dismal Nitch.
Those in the Corps of Discovery could not have possibly imagined the places where they spent a miserable winter in 1805-06 would become a national park today. Of the 106 days they spent at Fort Clatsop, for example, there were only a dozen sunny days. The rest were dark and dreary highlighted with punishing rain.
But on Nov. 2, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the bill creating the Lewis and Clark National and State Historical Parks, our country's 59th national park. Today, thousands of comfortably dressed and well-fed visitors come to the park each year. Territory, which took Lewis and Clark’s men days to cross, now is covered in an hour or less. Visitors can only imagine the misery as they dodge the rain walking from their cars to the visitor centers.
Park Named for Expedition Commanders
The new park is named after the Corps of Discovery co-commanders, captains Meriwether Lewis, once a personal attaché to President Thomas Jefferson, and William Clark, Lewis' former superior officer in the Army. It also honors the Corps and the Native Americans from the Columbia and Clatsop tribes. They traded native vegetables, wild game and other essentials to the visitors.
The lower Columbia tribes also helped the expedition locate Fort Clatsop in a protected site at Netul Landing along what is today called the Lewis and Clark River. In addition, they taught them to track game through the dense forest, set up a salt works to preserve food for the return trip, and trade for blubber and whale meat.
In fact, without the help of Native American tribes all along the 4,000 mile trail, the Corps would have perished and their mission would have failed. Picking up the French-Canadian fur trader and guide, Toussaint Charbonneau, at the Mandan villages in North Dakota was important, but it was his Shoshone Indian wife, Sacagawea, who saved the Corps in Montana when they needed horses and trail information to cross the Rockies. Throughout the journey, she cared for their infant son, Jean Baptiste.
Amazingly, only one man died during the whole grueling ordeal. That was Sergeant Charles Floyd, who succumbed to peritonitis from a ruptured appendix on the first leg of the trip along the lower Missouri River. Among the survivors was Lewis' Newfoundland dog, Seaman.
The park, which includes three sites where Lewis and Clark explored and camped, combined the Fort Clatsop National Memorial in Oregon (expanded to 1,500 acres), Clark's Dismal Nitch Station Camp, and Cape Disappointment State Park, which are both in Washington.
The main attractions are the visitor centers at Fort Clatsop near Astoria and Cape Disappointment at Ilwaco, which are well done and worth the price of admission. But there is much more to the Lewis and Clark experience than just the national park. For example, along the Snake and Columbia rivers throughout Washington, there are roadside reminders of the expedition. Just outside the park, the Corps' salt works have been recreated in Seaside.
While the Corps spent most of the winter at Fort Clatsop, a historic event occurred in our state. It was the first true American election. Lewis and Clark allowed everyone, including Clark’s slave, York, and Sacagawea, to vote on whether to set up the winter encampment on the Washington or Oregon side of the river. It was the first time a woman, Native American, and an African-American voted in our nation.
New Park is the Western End of the Trail
The Lewis and Clark National and State Historical Parks are on the western end of the trail. President Thomas Jefferson dispatched Lewis and Clark to explore and map the more than 800,000 square miles purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million and perhaps find the allusive Northwest Passage — the mythical waterway linking the Mississippi to the Pacific.
Jefferson got more than he expected. Along with maps from St. Louis to Astoria, he received mountains of information and comprehensive logs of unknown plants, animals and fish. There were samples as well. The discoveries opened a whole new world for scientists.
The new park, like our country's oldest, Yellowstone, spans more than a single state. Yellowstone, which President Ulysses S. Grant made our first national park in 1872, straddles the Continental Divide between Montana, Idaho and Wyoming — the headwaters of the Snake and Missouri rivers.
Interestingly, Washington and Oregon were outside the Louisiana Purchase, while Yellowstone was included. The unexplored land mass extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains would double the land mass of the United States, then a nation of 15 states. Eventually, the United States would acquire both Washington and Oregon after the United States and Great Britain settled the location of the U.S./Canadian border at the 49th Parallel with the Oregon Treaty of 1846.
Finally, there is a human connection as well. Private John Colter, an expedition member, was the first non-Indian to see what would become Yellowstone National Park. It was nicknamed "Colter’s Hell," but no one back in St. Louis would believe what he described after he explored Yellowstone during the winter of 1807-08. Colter, along with Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith, were legendary as the original "mountain men," fur-trappers and traders who roamed the Rocky Mountains between 1810 and 1860.
Volumes have been written about Lewis and Clark, the Corps of Discovery, and their expedition. Visiting Lewis and Clark National and State Historic Park only deepens one’s appetite to learn more about what may be one of the greatest treks in the history of mankind.
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