Lewis (1774-1809) and Clark (1770-1838) were the trailblazers that led the first United States expedition to the Western Pacific coast. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson commissioned an expedition to establish trade and U.S. sovereignty over the native peoples along the River Missouri.
U.S. Army Captain Meriwether Lewis chose his retired commanding officer, William Clark, to accompany him on the expedition. Leaving Hartford, Illinois on May 14th 1804, the expedition met up with Lewis in Saint Charles, Missouri. The trail blazers (Lewis and Clark) followed the Missouri River west, beginning what was to be almost two and a half years of political and geographical discovery.
The trail blazed by the Lewis and Clark expedition
Following the Missouri River through what would become the Midwest, the trail blazers established relations with two dozen Indian nations. The help of the Native American people prevented the Lewis and Clark expedition from starving or getting lost. In the winter of 1804-1805 the party of trailblazers built Fort Mandan near modern day Washburn, North Dakota. In the Spring, they continued to the headwaters of the Missouri River in Montana. Crossing the Great Continental Divide, the division between rivers that flow east to the Atlantic Ocean and west to the Pacific Ocean, the expedition descended the mountains by the Clearwater River, the Snake River, and the Columbia River.
For their second winter, the party built Fort Clatsop in present-day Oregon before tuning east for home on March 23rd, 1806. The six months it took them to get home include hostile incidents with the Blackfeet and Crow tribes before arriving back in St Louis, Missouri on September 23rd, 1806. Trailblazers in the United States fur trade, Lewis and Clark established relations with Indian and Canadian fur trappers. By finding the passage to the West Coast, the trailblazers opened up the rich inland of the United states for settlement and trade. Read about more trailblazers who changed the world on http://www.trailblazers101.com/.