North Dakota Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and Fort Mandan

From the Lewis and Clark website, "The North Dakota Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center provides an overview of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, with special emphasis on the time spent at Fort Mandan during the winter of 1804- 1805."

Notice that the sentence at the top of the photo is missing a comma.  That sure changed the meaning of the sentence.  Click on photos to enlarge them for reading.

We watched a video of the preparation that went in to this expedition.  President Thomas Jefferson gave Merriweather Lewis a detailed description of what he expected of the trip.  He wanted detailed notes on all wildlife, natives, flora, weather... in fact everything that the group would experience during their trip.  Lewis was sent off for schooling in everything from biology to paleontology.  He is the one that suggested Clark as co-leader.

These photos aren't exactly in order but they still give you an idea of happened during Lewis and Clark's expedition.



 This rifle had to be pumped 1500 times to fill the air chamber.   This took about 1/2 hour.  The ball were loaded with an autoloader then the rifle could be fired multiple times without having to load it.

Notice the large butt air chamber.

Another video explained that sometimes the terrain they covered was so harsh that they would have to replace their moccasins every other day. 

This display about Sacagawea was very interesting.  See next photos for closer views.

It was interesting to note that it took the expedition 1 year and 7 months to go west and 6 months to go east.    Of course going downstream at the rate of 80 miles a day was much quicker than rowing upstream.

I missed taking a photo of the section that said that James Audubon was on the boat.

Plenty of cottonwoods here.