Updating the Journals Nearly 200 Years Later: Lewis and Clark's Expedition

If Lewis and Clark were making the trip today, their journals would be on a laptop and their Internet map coordinates would be checked using a GPS hand-held unit. Two hundred years ago Jefferson and the nation thought the explorers were lost; today their cell phones would keep them in constant communication with White House operators.

Lewis and Clark, with minimal advance education and training, classified and drew detailed pictures of 300 flora and fauna never before seen by white American citizens living east of the Mississippi River. They practiced anthropology skills by recording details of Indian tribes they met, including basic language structure. They monitored weather patterns, described geological formations and recorded all these data and drew their maps using quill pens that had to be dipped in ink for every other word using notebooks that had to be safely protected from canoe spills. Instead of "select all" and "copy," they often hand-duplicated each other's journal entries as backups in case tragedy befell the original set. And, yes, they really needed Spell Checker, relying instead on phonetics since there was no standardized dictionary readily available at the time.

Students and teachers were invited to join a modern-day community of learners to update the journals of Lewis and Clark's 28-month trip.

How This Web Site Originated

Teachers and students from 16 communities were the first to make contributions to the "Journal Update" project during school year 1999-2000 and they continued to make refinements during school year 2000-2001. The topics they chose and the communities where they live include:

The above modern-day explorers from 16 school districts might be compared to the 16 or so men who were part of the larger 45-man command that left Camp Dubois near St. Louis in May, 1804, fought their way up the Missouri River, and spent the winter in Fort Mandan (present-day North Dakota). Those critical 16 were asked to return the keelboat to St. Louis the next spring and bring back the Expedition's first records and specimens, including four live animals, to an excited Jefferson. The other 33 men, including Sacagawea and her infant son, continued westward into lands yet uncharted, interacted with hundreds of Indians, and were glad to get home 28 months later to a grateful nation that had given them up for lost.

This bicentennial project was launched in 1998 in Washington D.C., not far from Monticello where Jefferson outlined the first plans for the Expedition in 1803 with his young aide Meriwether Lewis. On behalf of a multi-agency team, the U.S. Department of Education allocated grants to six federal offices submitting ideas. One successful applicant was Fort Clatsop National Memorial, a unit of the National Park Service. Purposes of the initiative were to help students meet rigorous academic standards using technology such as the Internet to access available federal resources.

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) in Portland OR, a grantee of the U.S. Department of Education, assisted with school district coordination and web site development. Other federal entities participating directly or indirectly in student projects included the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, NASA, and the U.S. Forest Service. This first vanguard of modern-day "rediscovery" share the hope that this project will continue as a Bicentennial showcase of student learning during the years 2003-2006. This project results from the leadership and energies of the following persons:

Inspiration for the project came from Dr. Gary Moulton, the one person today most familiar with the documents created by Lewis and Clark. Dr. Moulton is editor The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, a comprehensive and carefully-annotated collection of journals, maps, and other records associated with the venture. Dr. Moulton completed his 20-year work on the 13-volume series in 1999 and remains in the history department at the University of Nebraska. His sabbatical at Fort Clatsop National Memorial in summer 1999 and teachers' workshop in Idaho that summer helped solidify the project format.

Many of the teachers and students in this pilot project were assisted by individuals and organizations at the local community level. In several projects, the involvement by local tribal members was important. In all cases, students accessed information on-line and from distant locations thanks to the Internet and World Wide Web.

For more information on Lewis and Clark and the upcoming Bicentennial, search out the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Website and the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council Web site.

Lewis and Clark's Expedition · The Legacy Grows: Lewis and Clark's Garden · Student Projects (Teach Lewis and Clark) · About the Student Projects

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Date of Last Update: 2/25/2002
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