05/16/2023
Departure Day in 1804
It was a Monday and everything was nearly ready for departure. William Clark was solely in charge at Camp River Dubois on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, while Meriwether Lewis continued to work on the Corpsโ behalf in St. Louis, about 20 river miles south.
It rained most of the day, but that didnโt deter the menโs final preparations. Sometime that day, on the back of a map, Clark scribbled a partial inventory of the goods and supplies they had loaded, and at the bottom he added:
โOur party
2 Capts. 4 Sergeants, 3 Intptrs., 22 Amns. 9 or 10 French, & York
1 Corpl. & Six in a perogue with 40 Days provisions for the party as far as the provisions lastโ
(โAmns.โ is assumed to be his abbreviation for Americans.)
The Corps of Discovery shoved off at 4 p.m. and progressed as far as โthe first island in the Missouri.โ According to Gary Moultonโs notes in โThe Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark,โ this campsite would have been near the mouth of Coldwater Creek in St. Charles County, Missouri, just above the historical site of Fort Bellefontaine and about one-half mile below the U.S. Highway 67 bridge.
Learn more about the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail
๐ https://www.nps.gov/lecl/index.htm
Image: USGS Landsat
Image Description: A USGS satellite color photo of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in 2021. An overlay shows the approximate locations of the two river channels in 1804. Since then, the Mississippi river has shifted east at this location and the estimated location of Camp River Dubois would now be on the Missouri side of the river; the mouth of the Missouri River has shifted south.