In May 1804 Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the Corps of Discovery embarked on a seven-thousand-mile journey with instructions from President Thomas Jefferson to ascend the Missouri River to its source and continue on to the Pacific. They had spent five months in the St. Louis area preparing for the expedition that began with a six-hundred-mile, ten-week crossing of the future state of Missouri. Prior to this, the explorers had already seen about two hundred miles of Missouri landscape as they traveled up the Mississippi River to St. Louis in the autumn of 1803.
Lewis and Clark in Missouri focuses on the Missouri chapter of their epic journey, a portion of the story that has been slighted in other accounts. Ann Rogers uses the journals kept by members of the Corps along with many other primary source materials, providing a firsthand perspective on the people, plants, wildlife, rivers, and landscapes the explorers encountered. Beautiful color photographs and illustrations complement the text and support the passages Rogers quotes from the journals.
Brief biographies of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, John Colter, York, and other members of the expedition tell of their years in Missouri after the journey ended. Today’s followers of the Lewis and Clark Trail can find descriptions of sites to visit in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois.
Carefully researched, yet highly readable, Lewis and Clark in Missouri will be of great interest not only to Missourians, but also to anyone wishing to learn more about the Corps of Discovery’s historic journey.
