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Hiking is great. I should do a lot more of it. The other day, my wife and I ventured out to a local state park that neither of us had visited. We drove through and looked around a bit. Then, on a whim, we decided to walk one of the trails. It wasn’t anything big (a little more than half a mile), but it sure was fun. We’re venturing back out to Rocky Mountain National Park in three weeks, and though we’re going a little later than we did last year (and again staying at River Spruce…a really great set of cabins), I’m hoping the weather will be fair enough to get a couple hikes in.
I need to transistion into something historical.
Well, Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park are both in Colorado, and the eastern half of Colorado was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Well, that sort of works.
On August 31, 1803, the Corps of Discovery departed from Pittsburgh, PA. This group of 33 men may not be familiar to some of you until their leaders are mentioned: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their mission was to travel down the Ohio River, then up the Mississippi River to the Missouri, then up the Missouri River to…whatever they found, hopefully the Pacific Ocean.
The expedition was the brainchild of the man behind the territory’s purchase. Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd President, had pushed not only for the acquisition of Louisiana, but for its exploration. Jefferson loved to study plants and trees and animals, and I’m guessing that he would have been with Lewis and Clark had he not been already occupied.
But the voyage was late in starting. The Ohio River was the lowest it had been in anyone’s memory, making a boat trip tricky. And the boat itself had to be built on-site, which meant the builder (hundreds of miles from his boat-building competitors) could pretty much do as he pleased. And drinking was what he pleased most. It drove Lewis crazy to watch the river depths decrease while he waited for the drunk guy to finish the keelboat, which was 55′ long and 8′ wide. So a July 20th departure turned into August 1st and eventually became August 31st.
In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose writes of Lewis, “How anxious he was to get going he demonstrated on the morning August 31. The last nail went into the planking at 7:00 a.m. By 10:00 a.m., Lewis had the boat loaded.” They set off an hour later and ventured a few miles downstream. They stopped to show off the Lewis’ pneumatic air gun, and nearly succeeded in killing a woman when it discharged accidentally after the demonstration.
Lewis’ first journal entry for what would become America’s most important journey was simple enough. “Left Pittsburgh this day at 11 o’clock with a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage.”
Lewis and Clark were off.
Recommended Reading: Undaunted Courage
