In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off across an America that remained largely unknown to the government sending them.
Their mission was to follow the Missouri River, find a practical route to the Pacific Ocean and return with maps, scientific discoveries and information about the lands and people they encountered. The problem was that nobody knew whether the route they were searching for actually existed.
In the first half of this incredible expedition story, we meet the people who formed the Corps of Discovery, including Sacagawea, York and Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, Seaman. We follow the expedition upstream against the Missouri, through dangerous encounters, freezing winters, charging grizzly bears and a near-disastrous capsizing that almost destroyed their records.
Then Lewis reaches the Continental Divide and discovers the truth. Instead of the easy river route they expected, he finds mountain range after mountain range stretching towards the horizon.
In this episode:
- Why Thomas Jefferson commissioned the expedition
- The partnership between Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
- How the Corps prepared for an expedition into the unknown
- The complicated stories of Sacagawea and York
- Dragging heavily loaded boats against the Missouri River
- The expedition’s first and only death
- The vital knowledge provided by Indigenous nations
- The confrontation with the Lakota that nearly became violent
- Surviving winter at Fort Mandan
- Sacagawea’s introduction to the expedition
- Encounters with grizzly bears
- The capsized boat that nearly destroyed the mission
- The month-long struggle around the Great Falls
- Lewis’s discovery that the expected water route to the Pacific did not exist
Part one ends at Lemhi Pass, with winter approaching, supplies running low and the most dangerous part of the expedition still ahead.
Part two continues next week as the Corps searches for horses, enters the Rocky Mountains and attempts to reach the Pacific.
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