Looking Back at Lewis and Clark

Lewis and Clark traveled up the Missouri River in 1804 and down the lower Columbia River in 1805, shaping the geographic and political boundaries of the United States. Without that journey, the continent’s division could have favored Canada more strongly. The expedition is often celebrated as a famous camping trip and a scenic national myth, but it also carried practical consequences. Critics have argued the crossing was merely a feat, while supporters emphasize its role in advancing the American experiment of self-rule. The journey’s significance is tied to trust, wisdom, and the ability to extend governance and knowledge across vast, unfamiliar regions.

"If Meriwether Lewis and William Clark hadn't gone up the Missouri River in 1804 and then down the lower Columbia River in 1805, there might today be less United States and more Canada."

"In the national mythology, Lewis and Clark belong to the morning of the story-back when the waterfalls hadn't been choked by dams and there were still bands of Native Americans in the Rockies who had never seen a white person."

"The crossing of the continent was a great feat, but was nothing more," Henry Adams wrote, more than a century ago, in his history of Thomas Jefferson's Presidency."

"But if the American idea-the experiment of letting people rule themselves, in the hope that they will grow into the necessary trust and wisdom-is now foundering, or better instantiated in other countries, what sets the expedition apart from any other long camping trip, full of rain, mosquitoes, and, inter"

Read at The New Yorker