On the Trail of Lewis & Clark

Cousin Debi and history teachers every where, this one is for you! After Norm and I departed Pere Marquette, we drove south about 25 miles to a little village, Hartford, Ill., at the mouth of the Wood River where it empties into the Mississippi. It is situated across from the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi as well. The State of Illinois maintains a historic site here, on what is supposed to be the site of Camp DuBois (Wood River Camp) where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter of 1803-04 before starting up the Missouri.


Clark had a keelboat built near Pittsburgh and floated it down the Ohio River in the fall of 1803. The expedition then moved up the Mississippi to St. Louis and picked the Hartford site for the winter camp. The interpretive center has a full-size replica of the keel boat that is cut away on one side to show how provisions were packed onto it. There is also a film and exhibits about the native peoples, the maps, and the biographies of Lewis, Clark, and others on the expedition. It's fascinating and it's free (donation requested, and there's a gift shop.)

A replica of the winter camp, a crude stockade with a center cabin and four smaller corner cabins, is also on the site. No one knows what it really looked like, since there are no drawings, just some description in Clark's journals. A docent in the center cabin explains the layout and some of the items in the exhibit.

The interior of the center cabin has three rooms. This was where the on-duty enlisted man would sleep, with a desk for playing checkers or going over the orders of the day. There are two fireplaces in the building.

One large room was shared by the Captains, Merri- wether Lewis and William Clark. On the side imagined to belong to Lewis, various medicinal items and books about science are found on the desk. Behind this wall is a store room for items as they arrived for the expedition.

The side of the cabin imagined to be Clark's has replicas of maps and naviga- tional instru- ments. Both cots have repro- duction trade blankets. And there is a cask labeled "whisky" in the corner!

We found this site very easy to visit; it has lots of hands on activities that will appeal to school children. There are other sites in our area that we have already seen: the Museum of Westward Expansion under the Gateway Arch on the St. Louis riverfront chronicles the journey of the Corps of Discovery in exquisite detail. There is also a boat house and exhibit on the St. Charles riverfront, marking the first stop in Missouri that the expedition made on May 20, 1804. Other sites exist along the Missouri River through the state and we hope to visit them soon, and eventually trace most of the journey to Oregon. Given today's emphasis on creature comforts (camping tents with electrical outlets to help inflate your air bed, etc.) in the outdoors, plus our reliance on communication technology (my Sprint phone didn't work in parts of our trip, and I made sure to connect with the wireless on my laptop at the Lodge) and GPS (all Clark had was his sextant and compass plus crude maps drawn from interviews with Indians) it is mind boggling to think about 47 men (29 officers and privates, plus 18 boatmen) setting out in a keel boat and a couple of smaller pirouges, laden with gunpowder, grease, salted meat, flour, soap, whisky, trade goods, and a couple of changes of clothing apiece, to see if they could find a Northwest passage to the Pacific, map the route and catalog the flora and fauna, and get to know the First Inhabitants. In many ways, landing on the moon in 1969 was easy, compared to what Lewis and Clark achieved over 200 years ago.