In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark (20 page)

W
HAT
I
HAVE TERMED THE
“
STANDARD MODEL
” of understanding Lewis and Clark—glorifying the explorers as forerunners of civilization—informs the array of celebrations that marked the 150th anniversary of the expedition. Still, the commemorations covered a wide gamut of sophistication, running from “folk” to “literate elite” images.

In the spring of 1955, Hollywood offered its contribution when Paramount Pictures released the film
The Far Horizons
, starring Charlton Heston as William Clark, Fred MacMurray as Meriwether Lewis, and Donna Reed as “Sacajawea.” The movie virtually ignored historical fact in favor of rather typical cinematic clichés about the West. Even traditional views of the explorers appear to have been ignored.
Time Magazine
complained that “the very qualities that made Meriwether Lewis and William Clark great explorers—coolheadedness, caution
and iron self-discipline—are precisely the ones the moviemakers have thrown out the window.” While Clark and Lewis were depicted as “a pair of buffoons who would have trouble finding the mailbox,” Donna Reed played Sacajawea as “a high-fashion pulse-thumper turned out in beautifully tailored buckskin.” Conveniently for Clark and their romantic relationship, in the movie she was unmarried and had no child.
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Citing frequent Indian onslaughts and a “monosyllabic script” spiced up by an ongoing feud between Clark and Lewis, a critic for
The New York Times
concluded: “As for Paramount's idea of what Lewis and Clark did, was this trip necessary? Shucks, no.”
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For most of the country,
The Far Horizons
was probably the final word in remembering the famous journey of exploration. But while most of the national audience appeared to accept Paramount's version of the expedition, an increasing number of enthusiasts at the local and regional levels took a more serious view. Even at the folk level, residents of communities on or near the trail knew the Hollywood version failed to accord with commonly understood events in the Lewis and Clark narrative.

By 1955 the heritage of the Corps of Discovery's 1804–1806 journey had achieved more than purely historic or even nationalistic interest in the states through which the route had passed. For cities and communities in the region, the memory of Lewis and Clark represented growing commercial and promotional opportunities. Such opportunities, as indicated earlier, were closely tied to the national highway system, which, in the far West at least, had come into being in the late 1920s and the 1930s. Automobile tourism, especially after World War II, breathed new life into many dying towns. As described earlier, from the very beginning of the automobile age, promoters had touted particular highway routes in an effort to attract tourists, and, when possible, regional boosters attached colorful names and historical themes to these routes. The Lewis and Clark Expedition route seemed to be a natural for this sort of promotion, and highways played a major role in commemorations during the mid-1950s and thereafter.

With the advent of the sesquicentennial in 1955, local and regional activities increased sharply. The governors of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana proclaimed 1955 “Lewis and Clark Year” and appointed
a joint committee of representatives from the sesquicentennial committees in those states that met in Spokane, Washington, in December 1954 to plan commemorative celebrations. Events were scheduled to take place between May and October 1955 and were spaced so that none would conflict. In some cities a Lewis and Clark theme was added to regular annual events, while others staged elaborate celebrations dedicated to the sesquicentennial.
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Ever since the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, the Seaside, Oregon, Chamber of Commerce had been determined to “hold an annual festival commemorating the first Americans to cross the continent.” In Astoria, Oregon, a full week of activities accompanied the dedication of a newly completed replica of Fort Clatsop, the small log habitation where the Corps of Discovery spent the winter of 1805–1806.
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Special guests included William Glasgow Clark, said to be a “direct descendent” of William Clark, and Lydia Large, whose lineage as “Sacajawea's . . . great-great-grand niece” had been sworn to by the superintendent of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. From August 20 through August 28, 1955, the Astoria celebration included dances and athletic contests, a regatta, various teas, and guided historical tours, to name a few of the activities. Days were devoted to commemorations in both Seaside and Cannon Beach, but commemorative activities in Oregon were spread among the communities of Gearhart, Warrenton, and Hammond as well.
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The public was also invited to inspect the new replica of Fort Clatsop. This site, considered one of the most important historical sites in Oregon, had been shabbily marked until recently. For years, a local newspaper noted, the site's supposed location on the Lewis and Clark River five miles southwest of Astoria near U.S. Highway 101 had been indicated by a “simple flag pole” and a plain “concrete marker.” By the late 1940s the marker was overgrown with berry vines. Its plaque, which contained historical background, had been removed for safekeeping, and the rotted flagpole had been cut down. No clear directions from the nearest roadway existed to guide visitors to what remained of the marked site. As the newspaper story put it, “From there the pilgrim is on his own, much as were Lewis and Clark. If he turns off by instinct (there is no sign) over a muddy lane, he will find a pile of beer cans, the trail markers of civilization. There in an
unkempt grove hangs a small wooden sign ‘site of Fort Clatsop.'” Funds were not available to organizations in the area—including the Oregon Historical Society, the Clatsop County Historical Society, and the American Pioneer Trails Association—that were interested in improving or maintaining the site. In 1946 historian Bernard DeVoto followed the Lewis and Clark trail west as part of his research for what would become a hugely popular abridged edition of the expedition journals. When DeVoto publicly “expressed his horror” at the condition of the Fort Clatsop site, the general response was that “the war had prevented financing” its improvement. The writer of the news story added that it is “high time that something be done about Fort Clatsop.”
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An attempt to more accurately pin down the location of the fort was announced in 1948 by Walter Johnson, president of the Clatsop County Historical Society. “That summer,” the Astoria
Evening Budget
recalled, Louis Caywood, an archaeologist for the National Park Service, “began excavations at a location suggested by old surveys and photographs.” Caywood quickly encountered a layer of charcoal and uncovered several stone-lined firepits, which he concluded had been made and used by white men. Caywood's findings convinced the Oregon Historical Society and other interested persons that the location of the actual fort was only about ten feet from the marker the society had placed in 1901.
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As part of its preparations for the Lewis and Clark sesquicentennial celebration, the Oregon Historical Society—which owned the land on which excavations had been carried out—sponsored and oversaw the construction of a replica of the fort in 1955, based on the description in the journals. The Crown-Zellerbach wood products corporation agreed to provide logs for the replica, and local architect John Wicks designed the structure based on a drawing by Rolf Klep, formerly of Astoria. The “second-growth hemlock logs” were pre-fitted and marked so they could be easily assembled on the site. In May 1955, Astoria Jaycee and Lions club members began constructing the Fort Clatsop replica and completed it in time for Astoria's sesquicentennial celebration. Members of the American Legion Auxiliary hand-sewed an American flag with fifteen stars to fly over the replica of the fort. In July, Oregon senator Richard Neuberger introduced a bill to establish what was believed to be the original site of Fort Clatsop as a national monument.
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Fig 4.1
Doorway at the first Fort Clatsop replica near Astoria, Oregon. Following several years of archaeological work to determine the probable location of the expedition's 1805–1806 winter quarters, the replica was constructed in time for the Lewis and Clark sesquicentennial in 1955 and was designated a national monument. An interpretive center was added in the early 1960s. Photo by Jeffrey Phillip Curry. Courtesy, Jeffrey Phillip Curry.

As part of the 1955 commemoration, the Northern Pacific Railway Company agreed to finance a special sesquicentennial book with maps to familiarize readers with events in the journals and the nature of the country the explorers traversed. A section by northwestern author James Stevens extolled the expedition's role in blazing a trail for settlement and development. Included in the rather modest booklet is the text of a speech by Northern Pacific president Robert MacFarlane to the Western Railway Club in Chicago. In his address, entitled “The Lewis and Clark Country a Century and a Half Later,” MacFarlane tied Lewis and Clark to the march of “progress” represented by the great transcontinental railroads. There seems to be no conscious irony in his emphasis on the just-completed Missouri River
reservoirs, which had yet to be filled and would obliterate much of the Lewis and Clark trail. The booklet's cover lists the members of the Northwest Sesquicentennial Organizing Committee, which included three representatives from the Dakotas. Chapin D. Foster from South Dakota was co-chair.
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Yet except for the fact that some groups tracing the trail passed through the Dakotas, little evidence exists that the sesquicentennial was widely commemorated east of Montana. South Dakota officials, in fact, admitted that there would be “no exclusively Lewis and Clark celebrations” in the state in 1955 and stated that communities would refuse to support a series of planned pageants.
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It is understandable that residents of the Pacific Northwest, Idaho, and Montana would show greater interest in the Lewis and Clark Expedition than people further east. In many communities between Seaside, Oregon, and Great Falls, Montana, the names of the explorers and their exploits appear ingrained in the public consciousness. At the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers in northern Idaho and eastern Washington, for example, the names were ubiquitous long before the creation of the National Trail. The Corps of Discovery passed this way twice, in 1805 and 1806. A bridge across the Snake River connects Clarkston, Washington, with Lewiston, Idaho. Lewiston boasts the Lewis and Clark Hotel, Lewis-Clark State College, and Lewis-Clark Memorial Gardens, to name a few. “Nowhere along the route of the explorers,” an Associated Press story claimed, “are the names of Lewis-Clark so commercially evident” as in Lewiston and Clarkston.
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Yet the names are unavoidable elsewhere throughout the region as well. Both Clark and Lewis counties are found in Washington and Idaho, and Montana's capital is in Lewis and Clark County.

A site that, along with the Fort Clatsop replica in Oregon, played a particularly significant role during the sesquicentennial was Missouri Headwaters State Park near the town of Three Forks, Montana, about thirty miles northwest of Bozeman. In late July 1805 the Corps of Discovery had spent several days at the location where the Madison, Jefferson, and Gallatin rivers come together to form the Missouri. It was near this spot, Sacagawea had told the men, that a Minataree (Hidatsa) raiding party had attacked her Shoshone band
and taken her captive. From the Three Forks of the Missouri, the expedition proceeded up the Jefferson River. The park at the Three Forks was founded in conjunction with the most celebrated enactments of pageantry along the Lewis and Clark trail.

The idea of establishing a state park at the famous Headwaters of the Missouri dates back to the summer of 1928, when Clark Maudlin, a cement plant worker in nearby Trident, Montana, was picnicking with his wife and son at the Three Forks. Maudlin's wife, a former schoolteacher, pointed out that Lewis and Clark had visited that spot and that “this would be [an] ideal place for a park.” Both she and their son, Billy, succumbed to influenza the following summer, but years later, as he drove past the forks on his way to work each day, Clark Maudlin often remembered her words and was inspired to create a park to commemorate the expedition. He purchased the only parcel available for sale at the site and donated it to the state of Montana. The state was unable to fund further purchases, but it gave Maudlin the authority to raise the money needed to complete the park. By 1946 he had convinced civic and business leaders throughout the state to join “historical-minded” residents in the community of Three Forks in supporting the project and had recruited John G. Buttelman to head a new fund-raising organization called the Founders Club of Montana, of which Maudlin became vice president. More parcels were purchased, and in July 1951 the Missouri Headwaters State Park was officially opened.
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