Day 3

September 12, 2014.   Still staying in Villa Ridge, MO, SW of St. Louis.

We dedicated this day to seeing several locations in the St. Louis area that are historically important to the Corps of Discovery. We first went to the Arch on the Mississippi waterfront in St. Louis. A very impressive structure we'd visited about 20 years ago when we lived in Kansas. It was a cold, gray, windy day. Stella stayed to guard the campsite.




At the Arch we visited the underground museum, the 1890s style Emporium, and gift shop. One of the more interesting exhibits in the museum is the large number of presentation medals prepared by the British and US governments to give to Native American Indian chiefs.

Stuffed buffalo in the Arch Museum

It was fascinating to look at the Mississippi and think of the Expedition working its way upstream in all that current to get to the Missouri. This is also the location where Robert E. Lee made an early reputation for himself by diverting the Mississippi so that the St. Louis waterfront would not be buried in silt.

Historic Eads bridge over the Mississippi just north of the Arch.

We then drove about 20 miles to St. Charles, once a small town on the Missouri. Clark brought the keelboat and 2 pirogues to St. Charles to wait for Lewis in mid-May of 1804. The cargo in the boats had to be reloaded at St. Charles so the boats could better deal with snags and mudflats. At that time, the little town had about 100 houses and 450 people, mostly French.

Raising a glass to Lewis, Clark, and the Corps of Discovery at Trailhead Brewery.

 

Lewis and Clark museum with boathouse.

Today, St. Charles is home to a very nice Lewis and Clark museum and many antique stores and restaurants that cater to tourists and better-heeled locals. We had lunch at the Trailhead Brewery which has a good restaurant. The Lewis and Clark Museum is run by a local group and is excellent. There are reproductions of the keelboat and pirogues in the boathouse below the museum but they are behind bars and difficult to see. The museum has a really excellent series of dioramas that uses the rivers and mountains to depict key actions taken by the Corps as they traveled northwest across the continent.

Diorama depiction of St. Charles as the Expedition reloads the keelboat.

More of the long diorama.   Models in the foreground depict Fort Mandan in the winter of 1804-5.   Excellent!

There's a very large set of statues of Captain Lewis, Captain Clark, and the huge dog Seaman in Frontier Park in St. Charles, MO.

Epaulets on right shoulder indicate the rank of Captain in the US Army of 1804.   They often wore full dress uniform in 1804 while having meetings with Native American Indians.

It was great to again be on the shores of the Missouri. We lived within 2 miles of the old river for several years in Kansas and have seen it flood well out of its banks in 1993.

The Missouri at St. Charles.   Flotsam is very common in the river, especially at high water times.

Stephen Ambrose writes:

“As the keelboat turned her bow into the stream, Lewis and his party cut themselves off from civilization. There would be no more incoming letters, no orders, no commissions, no fresh supplies, no reinforcements, nothing reaching them, until they returned.”

We continue our journey West tomorrow.

Linda Adds:

  It is good to have packed layers as the temperatures plummeted today and our light jackets felt good...very cool for early September and we felt fortunate to have checked the weather while others shivered in summer attire. Despite the weather, really enjoyed the day.

Hit a snag with the internet. Can't complain when you remember how hard it was to send correspondence back to friends, family and associates for Lewis and Clark. It is hard to imagine what people thought had happened to these brave explorers when so little was heard from them. What would they think of all this technology?