200 years ago today, the Lewis and Clark expedition reached Cascadia, when they crossed the Continental Divide. It was Lewis’ 31st birthday and he adopted a melancholy tone in his journal when he wrote, “I had as yet done but little, very little indeed.”
Here’s a pithy timeline of the expedition’s highlights—it’s fun to follow along.
(Though Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery were the first American citizens to reach the Pacific Northwest, Americans tend to forget that theirs was not the first transcontinental journey north of Mexico to reach the Pacific. That distinction belongs to Alexander Mackenzie, a Canadian, who reached the Pacific in 1793, a dozen years ahead of Lewis and Clark.)
