Tracking Lewis and Clark on the Upper Missouri

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Outside Traveler 2004

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Revisionist History
Tracking Lewis and Clark on the Upper Missouri Backward

By John Fox


	Doing it all over again on the Upper Missouri (MacDuff Everton)

"Damn! That was a bow shot! I knew I shoulda brought my bow." Jim Cummings, our guide, had locked eyes with a fat, antlered deer munching sagebrush on the river's edge. Armed only with a canoe paddle, Jim watched as the animal traipsed uphill, white tail bobbing. "Old Lewis and Clark would've had that buck on a spit by now," he said as we paddled on.

Unlike Jim, a native Montanan with a Yosemite Sam mustache and a permanent cheek-bulge of Skoal, I'd never thought of a deer as potential dinner. Like many East Coasters, I was raised on a Hollywood version of the West. My image of Lewis and Clark was tainted early by the 1955 film The Far Horizons, in which Charlton Heston played William Clark against Fred MacMurray's wussy Meriwether Lewis. Despite this handicapped historical interpretation, the 2004–2006 bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's journey gave me the chance to experience the real deal.

Bicentennial Blowouts

CLICK HERE to see the best events and activities to help you reblaze the Lewis and Clark Trail.

When the two men left Camp Dubois, near St. Louis, in May 1804, about two-thirds of Americans lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic. The West, for them, was a mysterious Land Before Time, home to prehistoric mammoths and lost tribes of blue-eyed Welshmen. President Jefferson had just bought a sizable chunk of this never-never land from the French for about three cents an acre—the Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million—and wanted to know what kind of deal he'd gotten. And so Jefferson charged his assistant Lewis, the buff former Army captain Clark, and their 40-plus-man Corps of Discovery with a daunting mission: to locate a direct, navigable passage from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Like Lewis and Clark, I headed west with grand ambitions. I was determined to see a slice of America and tap into the innocent wonder that gushes from the pages of the duo's expedition journals. I wanted to have the experience without the "help" of interpretive markers, scenic overlooks, and commemorative Lewis and Clark candy bars. (Yes, they exist.) And because the majority of their epic unfolded along the course of the Missouri River, a paddling trip seemed the way to go.

I talked my brother Joe into coming along to play Lewis to my Clark. Jim's buddy Dan, a coffee buyer from Seattle, rounded out our four-man corps. We paddled the Hummer of canoes, a 34-foot replica of the skin-over-frame boats used by 19th-century fur trappers. Our four-day outing would take us along 50 miles of Montana's Upper Missouri River, from Virgelle to Judith Landing, the same stretch that Lewis and Clark covered between May 29 and June 1, 1805.

We put in, our first day, by an old ferry landing in Virgelle (population two) and headed east downriver—opposite the direction the Corps of Discovery went. "Only a fool would go upriver in a canoe if he didn't have to," Jim stated matter-of-factly when I looked confused. In an unfortunate Ken Burns moment, I mused aloud about heading east toward the past, rather than toward America's future, as Lewis and Clark had done. "Just paddle," said Jim, spitting tobacco juice into the muddy current.

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