The expedition that mapped America's unknown western half
The Corps of Discovery crossed the vast western land the U.S. had just bought in the Louisiana Purchase, mostly on foot and by river.
After the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the young United States, almost none of that western territory had been mapped by its new owners. A select group of U.S.
Army soldiers and civilian volunteers, led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his friend William Clark, set out to cross it. Clark and about thirty others left Camp Dubois, Illinois, met Lewis and ten more at St. Charles, Missouri, then pushed up the Missouri River.
Lewis became the first white American to lay eyes on the Great Falls of the Missouri.
Why it mattersTheir journals and maps turned a blank space on America's map into a known, navigable continent for everyone who followed.
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