Fly the launch sequence of Lewis & Clark, east to west
Before the Missouri, before the Pacific, the expedition assembled on the Ohio. Fly it the way the Corps came west. Cincinnati (KLUK): Lewis docked here in September 1803, then rode 17 miles overland to Big Bone Lick, collecting Ice Age fossils for President Jefferson; the shipment sank near Natchez, and Clark returned in 1807 for the dig that earned the Lick its name as the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology. The Falls of the Ohio (KJVY): Lewis and Clark shook hands here on October 14, 1803; Clark's Nine Young Men from Kentucky enlisted, and York, enslaved by Clark, joined; he would become the first African American to cross the continent. The Corps pushed off October 26. St. Louis Downtown (KCPS): down the Ohio and up the Mississippi, they wintered at Camp Dubois on the Illinois bank just upriver, and the journey west proper began May 14, 1804.