Lewis and Clark Expedition Key Facts

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

U.S. President Thomas Jefferson was interested in knowing more about the lands west of the Mississippi River and in finding a water route to the Pacific Ocean. He also wanted to make diplomatic contact with American Indian groups in the area and to expand the United States fur trade.

In 1803, two years after Jefferson became president, he asked the U.S. Congress for $2,500 for an expedition. (The final cost for the expedition would total $38,000.)

To head the expedition, Jefferson chose his young secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis.

Lewis invited his friend Lieutenant William Clark to share the leadership. Both were familiar with the frontier and with some Native American groups through their service in the army.

Before Lewis and Clark set out, French leader Napoleon sold an immense tract of land to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. Therefore, part of the region that the expedition was to explore was U.S. territory.

Plans for the expedition were carefully laid. In preparation for the historic journey, Lewis studied natural history and learned how to fix latitude and longitude by the stars.

Lewis and Clark ExpeditionMap of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The starting point for the expedition was near St. Louis, Missouri. The expedition company was called the Corps of Discovery. On May 14, 1804, the company of about four dozen men started up the Missouri River in a covered keelboat and two dugout boats. They continued up the Missouri, stopping near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, where they built Fort Mandan. There they spent the winter of 1804–05 among the Mandan and Hidatsa.

The explorers left Fort Mandan the next spring, hiring Toussaint Charbonneau and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, who served as guide and interpreter.

Sacagawea was very helpful to the explorers. Carrying her infant son on her back, she traveled thousands of wilderness miles with the expedition. At one point in the journey Sacagawea was instrumental in obtaining horses and a guide from a band of Shoshone (led by her brother Cameahwait); without them the expedition might well have ended.

The explorers traveled through what is now Montana and by horse over the Continental Divide to the headwaters of the Clearwater River. With the help of some Native Americans, they built canoes to carry them to the Snake River and then to the mouth of the Columbia River. They reached the Pacific Ocean in mid-November 1805.

Fort Clatsop: Lewis and Clark ExpeditionFort Clatsop is shown in this detail of a map of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C.

The members conducted a democratic vote on where to spend the winter of 1805–06. York, an enslaved African American owned by Clark, and Sacagawea participated in the voting with the rest of the corps members. Near present-day Astoria, Oregon, the corps built Fort Clatsop and endured a wet, miserable winter.

On the journey back the group divided, then reunited to canoe down the Missouri to St. Louis, arriving to great acclaim in September 1806 (the group had been believed dead). All but one member of the expedition survived the journey.

President Jefferson had instructed Lewis to make observations of latitude and longitude and to take detailed notes about the soil, climate, animals, plants, and Native American peoples that the corps encountered. Lewis identified 178 plants new to science, including bitterroot, prairie sagebrush, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine, as well as 122 animals, such as grizzly bear, prairie dog, and pronghorn antelope.

The Corps of Discovery made contact with many Native American peoples. Interactions with Native Americans as well as many other details of the historic journey are described in journals that were kept by several of the expedition’s members, which people still study today.

Lewis and Clark Expedition Timeline

Lewis and Clark Expedition | Timeline

Lewis and Clark Expedition Causes and Effects

Lewis and Clark Expedition | Causes & Effects