Honoring Lewis and Clark

ASSOCIATED PRESS
WITH THEIR CLOTHES ROTTING off, their bedding soaked and their provisions low, members of the Lewis and Clark expedition were at the soggy depths of their misery.
"About 3 oClock the wind luled and the river became calm, I had the canoes loaded with great haste and Set Out from this dismal nitch where we have been confined for 6 days passed," William Clark wrote on Nov. 15, 1805, noting they were "Scerce of Provisions and torrents of rain poering on us all the time ..."
A dismal nitch it must have been. And Dismal Nitch, Wash., it is today, one of a dozen historic sites and parks banded together for the Voyage of Discovery's bicentennial in the new Lewis and Clark National and State Historical Park, America's newest national park.
The park straddles the Columbia River and stretches along 40 miles of coastline in Washington and Oregon, allowing visitors to walk in the footsteps of the moccasin-shod explorers.
Visitors can hit the highlights in a few hours, but hardcore "Clarkies," as some expedition fans call themselves, can spend days.
Fort Clatsop
The park is anchored by the replica of Fort Clatsop south of Astoria, Ore., where the expedition spent the soggy winter of 1805-1806, and the interpretive center at Cape Disappointment, Wash., where the expedition first saw the Pacific Ocean 18 months after they began.
Fort Clatsop contains a replica of their winter quarters, based on drawings and descriptions in the journals of Clark and Meriwether Lewis. There are regular demonstrations of weaponry and of skills the explorers relied on, such as tanning elk hides and making clothing.
At the entrance to Fort Clatsop is an Indian canoe, carved from a 900-year-old log.
Cape Disappointment -- formerly known as Fort Canby State Park -- is a museum with a trail to a lighthouse overlooking the Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia.
Both the fort and the museum show films about the explorers.
The group experienced what may have been the first universal suffrage in the country on Nov. 24, 1805, at Station Camp, on the Washington side. The expedition voted to cross the river, where Indians said there was an abundance of elk and good water, to spend the winter. Clark's slave, York, and Sacagawea, the female Indian interpreter, each got to vote, something that would not happen again in the United States for decades.
Cape Disappointment was named by an English captain who found the headland in 1788 but failed to locate the passage from the ocean to the river. Another expedition did find it, in 1792, and its captain named the river the Columbia after his ship, the Columbia Rediviva. Fur trade followed.
Archaeological find
This winter, archaeologists found beads, buttons, bullets and other artifacts there. "They probably bracket the time Lewis and Clark were here," said park superintendent Chip Jenkins. He said talks are under way with area tribes to determine who owns the items and how to display them.
Observation points, shoreline trails and interpretive signs will be in place at the site by November.
Dismal Nitch, also called the Megler Rest Area, is just a roadside turnoff today, with signs detailing what the explorers went through.
The old Fort Clatsop National Memorial was 157 acres. The newly expanded park covers 10,000 acres, including a 6-mile trail under construction that traces the explorers' route from Fort Clatsop, south of Astoria, to the sea.
"I deturmin'd to go as direct a Course as I could to the Sea Coast which we Could here roar," Clark wrote on Dec. 8, 1805.
Parts of the trail already are open.
"It was a fort. It is now a sizable national park," Jenkins said. "It covers a whole sweep of history."
The towering evergreens around the fort weren't there when the explorers camped there. But the wind swishing through the trees gives a sense of the wilderness they encountered.
At the salt cairn near Seaside, where a group from the expedition spent weeks making salt for the return voyage, re-enactors will demonstrate salt-making the third weekends in July and August.
The expedition survived partly through barter with Indians.
Jenkins urged visitors to bring something to trade and try their skills with the salt-makers.
Archaeologists searched in vain for the original site of the fort, but based on old photos and reports, they think the replica is at or near the right spot.
Marketing
The Oregon Department of Transportation is placing signs along major highways feeding the area.
"We had 265,000 visitors last year, and we expect at least 20 percent more this year," said Jenkins.
The influx includes passengers from 14 cruise ships scheduled to dock in Astoria between May and October.
Astoria was the first permanent white settlement west of the Mississippi. Attractions include homes dating to the late 19th and early 20th century, the Maritime Museum, historic waterfront and Flavel House museum.
The Lewis and Clark Explorer train runs round-trip from Portland on weekends along the lower Columbia.
From Nov. 11 to 15, a signature Lewis and Clark Bicentennial event called "Destination: The Pacific" will feature tribal participation, re-enactments, ceremonies and lectures. "Wintering over" activities take place each month until March 2006, the bicentennial of the start of the explorers' return trip.
On Nov. 18 at Cape Disappointment, Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., will dedicate the first installation of her "Confluence Project," a series of interpretive artworks to be located along the Columbia and its tributaries.
The Lewis and Clark National Bicentennial Exhibition, which features many items collected during the Voyage of Discovery, will be at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland from Nov. 11 to March 11. It is one of five cities hosting the exhibit.
Thomas Jefferson sent the explorers on the 1803-1806 journey to learn more about the land he acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. They also were assigned to learn about the inhabitants, seek a water route to the Pacific and catalogue plants, rocks, soils and animals.
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