This article is first in a series of Bicentennial historical essays and compilations that will track the progress of Lewis and Clark's 'Corps of Discovery', from the keelboat launching on the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, to their journey up the Missouri River. (for content reference source and credits, please see bibliography)

Prologue

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark accomplished two centuries ago what many people still dream of doing today: Discovering a wondrous frontier at their own pace and their employer's expense.

In a military expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, the two Army buddies and the 31 other permanent members of their team crawled along mosquito-clogged riverbanks and over daunting, snow-covered mountains.

They won stand-offs with grizzly bears and ate dogs and horses when their rations ran out. They met and established diplomatic relations with 30 to 40 Indian tribes, then leaned mightily on those ties to survive their trek.

The main quest was for a water route Jefferson hoped would link the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, spurring westward expansion and stealing Britain's lucrative fur trade in the bargain. The watery Northwest Passage turned out to be a fable but that hardly crimped the explorers' scope of discovery or the collective will of the men whose might and moxie cranked the expedition's oars and sails.

During an 8,000-mile, 28-month journey that began on the Monongehela River near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, touched the Pacific Ocean and ended in St. Louis Missouri, Lewis made detailed observations of plants and animals. Clark mapped some of the 820,000 acres the United States acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Jefferson's masterful stroke of real estate dealing.

Jefferson's desire to explore the west had burned for three decades before Lewis and Clark took a single step, but the pair succeeded where three previous expeditions had sputtered or failed. Their military backgrounds, friendship and separate but complementing curiosities seemed to make the difference.

Jefferson's Virginia home in Charlottesville Virginia was 11 miles from Locust Hill, the large plantation Lewis inherited as a boy after his father died. Jefferson knew Lewis was an expert horseman, loved to roam the woods and had a deep knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants. Lewis' family had a distinguished coat of arms: "All Earth is to a Brave Man His Country," it read. In retrospect, the phrase seems prophetic.

By the time President Jefferson invited Lewis to become his personal secretary in 1801, the young adventurer had added a decade of diverse service in the U.S. Army to his resume. Lewis had already seen much of the western frontier, traveled by keelboat and, in desperation, eaten rotten bear meat. He'd also served in a special Army company of sharpshooters led by Clark, whom he befriended. A skilled backwoodsman, rifleman and negotiator, the 33-year-old Clark was even-keeled and managerial, a good balance to the moody, mercurial Lewis.

Lewis began an intensive apprenticeship in Washington, living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in the damp, dreary East Room, where Abigail Adams once hung her wash. He met the elite, absorbed military politics, read in Jefferson's vast library and examined maps with Albert Gallatin, secretary of the treasury and an avid map collector.

In January 1803, Congress authorized the expedition and Jefferson chose Lewis to lead it. In the first half of that year, Lewis studied in Philadelphia where the nation's top scientists taught him zoology, geography, celestial navigation, botany, ornithology, history and philosophy. Then, he began purchasing supplies and invited Clark, his friend and former military superior, to help him lead the expedition.

Pittsburgh 1803 - At the Forks of the Ohio

One day after newspapers reported the Louisiana Purchase on July 4, 1803, Meriwether Lewis set out for Pittsburgh PA, arriving there on July 15. Upon arrival, he immediately writes to Jefferson, at 3 p.m.

"Dear Sir, I arrived here at 2 O'Clock, and learning that the mail closed at 5 this evening hasten to make this communication, tho' it can only contain the mere information of my arrival. No occurrence has taken place on my journey hither sufficiently interesting to be worthy of relation........I have not yet seen Lieut. Hook nor made enquiry relative to my boat, on the state of which, the time of my departu[r]e from hence must materially depend: the Ohio is quite low, but not so much so as to obstruct my passage altogether."

Because of the military nature of his mission, it is believed that Lewis bunked at Fort Fayette, 10 blocks east of the ruins of Fort Pitt and away from the seasonal floods, which regularly damaged the old British outpost. The old revolutionary fort was (and still is) situated in the "Point", between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, just above where both meet to create the confluence of the Ohio River.

On July 16, 1803, the day after Lewis arrived in Pittsburgh, the front page of the Tree of Liberty newspaper was covered with the names of people who owed taxes on their Donation and Depreciation lands. Lewis also could have read, buried on page 3, what he already knew -- that the United States had obtained "the full right to and sovereignty over New Orleans, and the whole of Louisiana."

To Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, the Louisiana Purchase meant new markets for its products, new territory for migrating settlers and more men building more ships and boats to carry them downriver. A carpenter earned 70 cents per day in 1800; to put that in perspective, beef, pork, mutton and venison were selling for 3 to 5 cents a pound in 1801. Chocolate, a luxury item, sold for 40 cents a pound in 1807.

The Keelboat

When Lewis arived in Pittsburgh, he had expected his Keelboat to be ready in five days and what does he find? A boat with its ribs still showing, a surly boat builder overly fond of his liquor and a frontier town still learning and yearning to be civilized. He was, Lewis wrote Jefferson, "constantly

	Painting depicting the loading of supplies, tools and rations aboard the new keelboat.

either sick or drunk." He "quarreled with his workmen, and several of them left him." He was "disappointed in procuring timber." Lewis "prevailed on him to engage more hands, and he tells me that two others will join him in the morning."

Lined with keelboats and flatboats, the bank of the Monongahela River was bustling with the arrivals and departures of long-distance travelers. Life in 1803 in the city where the Ohio River began was rough-and-tumble, with vestiges from its early days on the edge of America. In the previous decade, Pittsburgh had its share of professional soldiers, woodsmen, guides and trappers and their presence could still be felt in the old-timers who lingered in the village. In 1803, records show about 50 men were engaged in boat building and about 30 in shipbuilding. Another 28 worked in a tin factory, 30 in a nail factory, 30 in the ropewalks and 12 in a cotton factory, all manufacturing goods that could be used to make boats, ships, rigging and sails.

The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, in a Lewis and Clark-related exhibit at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, states that the big boat was built in the boatyard of William Greenough, near what is now the north end of the Liberty Bridge on the

	Present day view of the Monongahela River just above Pittsburgh near the location where the Keelboat was constructed.

Monongehela River. But Elizabeth, one of the oldest towns in the Monongahela Valley, has long claimed the boatbuilder was its own highly accomplished Capt. John Walker, and some of the bicentennial's key participants agree.

Mike Fink, the legendary keelboater, was born near Fort Pitt in 1770, and while highly exaggerated in folklore -- he was the Paul Bunyan of the river -- his life was hard and fueled by alcohol.

For six weeks, Meriwether Lewis sweated and swore while waiting for the keelboat to be completed - a boat that would perform so admirably on so many rivers. Lewis hired a pilot, known only as T. Moore, to guide the keelboat.

Although Lewis, one of history's best-known travel writers, frequently derided his boat builder, he had nothing negative to say about Pittsburgh. In fact, he had nothing to say about Pittsburgh at all, probably because he was entirely familiar with it, having been stationed in Western Pennsylvania while he was in the Army.

Finally Underway

As soon as the 55-foot keelboat was finished on the morning of Aug. 31, Lewis and 11 men loaded it and pushed it into the dangerously low Monongahela River.

"Left Pittsburgh this day at 11 ock with a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage."
- Meriwether Lewis in his journal, Aug. 31, 1803

The best news Lewis received while in Pittsburgh was that Clark had accepted his invitation. The two captains had their pick of tough military men eager for adventure. Patrick Gass, an Irish carpenter from Western Pennsylvania, was chosen at Fort Kaskaskia in Indiana. John Colter joined the expedition in Pittsburgh; George Shannon, the youngest member of the group, also is believed to have joined in Pittsburgh.

	Ohio River route from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. to the confluence of the Missippi River at Cairo Illinois..

The three men went down the river with Lewis to join William Clark, and passed their trial period successfully to become permanent members of the expedition.

Patrick Gass became one of the group's leaders and legends. He was a master carpenter and a skilled horseman. Born July 12, 1771 in Falling Springs, near Chambersburg, central Pennsylvania and recruited in Kaskaskia, Ill. He served in a Ranger Company in 1792 and then enlisted in the 10th U.S. Infantry in 1799 in Carlisle, Cumberland County. He is said to have become a member of the permanent crew Jan. 3, 1804, after making a personal appeal to Lewis. In addition to his carpentry and survival skills, the man of Irish ancestry also was an outgoing raconteur with a ready wit. He settled after the expedition just over the Western Pennsylvania line in Wellsburg, W.Va., His descendants still live in Washington County. Gass became the longest-lived member of the Corps of Discovery and died three months short of his 99th birthday.

John Colter was one of the most experienced backwoodsmen of the group, and after the expedition made a famous solo trek through wild country in the middle of winter. He was born in 1775 near Staunton, Va. Although some sources say he was from Pittsburgh, others say he grew up in Kentucky. At any rate, he was in Pittsburgh by the time Lewis arrived in 1803. He was 5 feet 10 inches tall, had blue eyes and a somewhat shy countenance. He was known as a good hunter and tracker. He impressed the captains during the training period and was later one of the first selected to the permanent expedition force.

George Shannon was the youngest member of the party, and though he was said to be a good horseman, his youth clearly showed. He managed to badly cut his foot with an adze and lose his tomahawk, several horses and even himself two times on the trip. Shannon was born in 1785 or 1787 in Pennsylvania. During a visit with his mother's family in Pittsburgh in 1803, he met Lewis, who was awaiting the completion of the keelboat. Lewis urged him to try to be part of the expedition. He left with Lewis on the keelboat Aug. 31, and passed the weeks of evaluation during which the group of hopefuls was winnowed into the Corps of Discovery. While training at the Corps Camp Dubois in Illinois, he was chosen as one of "those which are to Constitute the Permanent Detachment."

	This painting depicts a typical encampment with the keelboat and pirogue moored along the banks of the Ohio River.

Lewis and his crew left Pittsburgh with at least two boats - the big boat and a readymade pirogue. Lewis always referred to the big boat as "the keeled boat," "the boat" or "the barge" - never "the keelboat."

It was built on a keel - the spine that runs from bow to stern - but it was not what people in 1803 would have called a keelboat, which had a large cabin called a cargo-box to shelter passengers and luggage. Lewis' boat was more like a military galley.

Once under way on that hot August day, Lewis stopped along the Ohio River three miles south of the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers at Brunot's Island, where he demonstrated his air gun to the amazement of onlookers.

After a man took the gun from Lewis, it discharged accidentally, knocked off a woman's hat and she fell like a bowling pin. Luckily, she was neither dead nor seriously injured and Lewis and his 11-member crew returned immediately to their keelboat.

Within a few days of launch, the pirogue - an oversized rowboat with a pointed bow, square stern and a mast and sail - "sprung a leek and nearly filled," - Lewis wrote in his journal on Sept. 4.

So at Georgetown, in Beaver County PA., Lewis purchased a canoe, with two paddles and two poles, which also leaked. Both boats were repaired and proceeded onward down the Ohio River. In Wheeling West Virginia on Sept. 8, Lewis bought another pirogue and picked up the rifles and ammunition that had been sent overland from Harpers Ferry to Pittsburgh to Wheeling.

The long river journey had begun.

Bibliography - Internet resources:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Lewis & Clark: 200 years later
Ohio River.net - Commerce & Industry of the Ohio River Valley
PBS.org - Journey of the Corps of Discovery