The official opening of the national Lewis and Clark Bicentennial in January 2003 ushered in nearly four years of commemorative events and activities that dwarfed all earlier attempts to recognize the expedition’s historical significance. The bicentennial celebration represented a variety of purposes with regard to public historical consciousness, including expressing patriotism, maintaining myths of national identity, educating family members through hands-on history, boosting tourism in communities along the expedition’s routes, and so forth. For many, it provided an opportunity to enlighten Americans by making their understanding of the past broader and more inclusive.

What should the history of Meriwether Lewis...

On June 1, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt tapped a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., to officially signal the opening of Portland, Oregon’s, Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair. Dignitaries on hand in Portland included Vice President Charles Fairbanks and Speaker of the House Joe Cannon. The fair’s motto was “Westward the course of Empire Takes Its Way,” and its official emblem included a woman, said to represent “Progress.” She had an American flag draped over her shoulder and her arms around two men, presumably William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The three are standing on the...

As described in Chapter 1, monuments and statues—once the traditional means of commemorating individuals idolized by the public—were eventually erected to honor William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. But the fascination that cast its spell over an increasing number of history buffs was inspired at least as much by the land and the routes taken through that land as it was by the people who made up the Corps of Discovery, in part because of the written records of the expedition. Without those records there would be no Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail today, since virtually no material...

As Chapter 2 indicates, most of Lewis and Clark’s path from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back follows, crosses, or closely parallels the highway system that developed during the 1920s and 1930s. Easy automobile access to the trail may help account for its growing popularity; by the mid-twentieth century it began to upstage the expedition personnel in the public’s historical consciousness.

Reinvigorating the historical memory of a western trail was not new, nor was associating it with a designated highway route. The Oregon Trail, for example, had become celebrated by the 1920s, largely through the efforts of Ezra...

What I have termed the “standard model” of understanding Lewis and Clark—glorifying the explorers as forerunners of civilization—informs the array of celebrations that marked the 150th anniversary of the expedition. Still, the commemorations covered a wide gamut of sophistication, running from “folk” to “literate elite” images.

In the spring of 1955, Hollywood offered its contribution when Paramount Pictures released the film The Far Horizons, starring Charlton Heston as William Clark, Fred MacMurray as Meriwether Lewis, and Donna Reed as “Sacajawea.” The movie virtually ignored historical fact in favor of rather typical cinematic clichés about the West. Even traditional...

Public opinion had begun to swing in favor of preserving wilderness and cleaning up parklands by the time John F. Kennedy became president. A new vision of “wilderness” as something human beings would define and manage took hold as a basis for national government policy. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall’s push for legislation to preserve natural places and roadless areas resulted in the 1964 Wilderness Act, which established a new set of rules for wilderness. The act stands as a landmark for preservation, but the struggle over which lands should be set aside for that purpose continued. The Wilderness...

Even before the U.S. Congress officially added the Lewis and Clark trail to the National Scenic Trail system, interest in the history of the expedition was heightened by the nation’s bicentennial, celebrated in 1976. Within a few years of that event, the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation began to establish local chapters. Eventually, individual chapters all along the trail began to host the organization’s annual summer meetings, at which members attended lectures on various topics, watched costumed reenactments, visited nearby expedition sites, and socialized. In 1980, nearly two years after the creation of the National Historic Trail, Bert Hansen’s...