(180406) First overland expedition to the U.S. Pacific coast and back, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark .
Initiated by Pres. Thomas Jefferson , the expedition set out to find an overland route to the Pacific, documenting its exploration through the new Louisiana Purchase . About 40 men, skilled in various trades, left St. Louis in 1804. They traveled up the Missouri River into present-day North Dakota, where they built Fort Mandan (later Bismarck) and wintered among the Mandan Sioux. They left the next spring, hiring Toussaint Charbonneau and his Indian wife, Sacagawea , who served as guide and interpreter. They traveled through Montana and by horse over the Continental Divide to the headwaters of the Clearwater River. They built canoes to carry them to the Snake River and then to the mouth of the Columbia River, where they built Fort Clatsop (later Astoria, Ore.) and spent the winter. On the journey back the group divided, then reunited to canoe down the Missouri to St. Louis, arriving to great acclaim in September 1806. All but one member of the expedition survived. The journals kept by Lewis and others documented Indian tribes, wildlife, and geography and did much to dispel the myth of an easy water route to the Pacific.