In late July 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition entered the Rockies, searching for the Shoshone from whom they hoped to purchase horses for their journey over the mountains. Lewis led scouting parties up an Indian trail that led to Lemhi Pass, and on August 12, one of the most memorable days of the expedition, became the first American to cross the Continental Divide. The next day Lewis finally found the elusive Shoshone. On August 17, in a script seemingly out of Hollywood, as the captains and Shoshone Chief Cameahwait sat down for a council, Sacagawea shrieked and began hugging the chief; turns out Cameahwait was Sacagawea’s brother! Fortune was definitely shining on Lewis and Clark.

On May 26, 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis noted in his journal that he “beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time…covered with snow and the sun shone on it to give me the most satisfactory view.” Soon thereafter, the Corps came upon the Missouri River Breaks, what Captain Clark called the “Deserts of America,” a stretch of 160 miles running from today’s Fort Benton to Fort Peck Lake, where the Missouri courses between 300 foot tall canyon walls; it remains one of the most remote parts of America. But perhaps the most wondrous site they experienced on their entire journey was the Great Falls of the Missouri, which Lewis called “the grandest site I ever beheld.”

The Corps of Discovery arrived at the Mandan villages near present day Bismarck, North Dakota, in late October 1804 and immediately began work on Fort Mandan on the north bank Missouri River. While at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark met a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau and his two teenage Shoshone wives who Charbonneau had won in a bet. They hired Charbonneau and his fifteen-year-old wife, Sacagawea, who was six months pregnant, as interpreters. On April 7, 1805, Lewis sent the keelboat back down river to St. Louis with detailed maps of lands west of the Mississippi and extensive reports written by the captains, as well as a treasure trove for President Jefferson, including almost two hundred specimens.

On October 14, 1803, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met in Clarksville, Indiana Territory, and commenced the most famous partnership in American history. They planned to leave with the spring thaw and reach the Mandan villages, 1,300 river miles above St. Louis, and spend the winter there before proceeding west. On May 21, 1804, the Corps pushed out into the current of the Missouri and, as the men moved north, they entered an enchanting land that very few would ever see again. But despite the idyllic surroundings, the Corps of Discovery was still an independent military expedition traveling in hostile territory. 

In March 1801, Captain Meriwether Lewis received a letter from Thomas Jefferson, the newly inaugurated president and a family friend, asking Lewis to become his private secretary. At the time, Lewis was a twenty-seven-year-old captain serving as the paymaster for the First Infantry Regiment. Over the next two years, Jefferson tutored Lewis on the lands west of the Mississippi and in the sciences of astronomy, botany, and anatomy in anticipation of an exploratory expedition to the Pacific Ocean. But both Jefferson and Lewis recognized the need to find a capable second officer for the expedition, and the man Lewis wanted to fill this coveted position was William Clark.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson drafted his official instructions for a great expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory and asked his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead it. Once assembled, the Corps of Discovery would operate like a small frontier garrison with rigidly maintained discipline. In the end, the group went forward remarkably prepared for what they would encounter over the next few years, a testament to the thorough planning of President Jefferson.

The dream of finding an all water route across North America, the mythical Northwest Passage, had been imagined since the time of Christopher Columbus, but three hundred years after the Admiral of the Ocean Seas completed his epic voyages, the vast interior of the continent was still essentially unknown to Europeans. As early as 1783, Thomas Jefferson had wanted to send an expedition to explore and chart the great unknown west of the Mississippi, and over the next twenty years, Jefferson tried on several occasions to enlist the support of some brave adventurer to undertake the exploration but with no success.

The Wilderness Road, running from northeast Tennessee through the Cumberland Gap, was the main thoroughfare from 1775 to 1820 for Americans heading west into the new promised lands of Kentucky. The pathway, blazed by Daniel Boone, was our nation’s first migration highway, but the trip was not for the faint of heart.

American pioneers had a yearning to move west and discover new lands. Along the way, they had to overcome daunting natural barriers, including the Appalachian Mountains. Immigrants desiring the unclaimed lands to the west traveled from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley to western North Carolina.

The Northwest Ordinance represents the first time the United States spread its wings and began to fulfill its destiny. As a result, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota would eventually be added to our country.