On February 28, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson won approval from Congress for a visionary project, an endeavor that would become one of America’s greatest stories of adventure. In May, 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on an amazing expedition across the Louisiana Territory. On their maps, the land that they were headed toward was indicated by a vast, blank space and the word, "Unknown." From that point forward, every trail, every corner they rounded was new. No one had any idea what was to come, or what to expect.
The Expedition of the Corps of Discovery shaped a crude route from St. Louis, Missouri, the Gateway to the West, onward to the waters of the Pacific and marked an initial pathway for the new nation to spread westward from ocean to ocean, fulfilling what would become to many Americans an obvious destiny. Over the next four years, the Corps of Discovery would travel thousands of miles, experiencing lands, rivers and peoples that no Americans ever had before.
Over the next two centuries the new Americans and many immigrants would wash across the central and western portions of what would eventually become the contiguous 48 United States. This wave of development would significantly transform virgin forests and grasslands into a landscape of cities, farms, and harvested forests, displacing fauna such as the buffalo and squeezing the Indians who survived onto reservations.
Celebrated the historic journey by following Lewis and Clark's historic trail. These true American heroes faced unknown people, harsh conditions and unexplored lands to secure a place in history as two of the world's greatest explorers.