The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

This week's column quotes from Bill Gulick's "Chief Joseph Country"

I visited the site of the Lewis and Clark encampment with the steel silhouette sculptures featuring 80 artistically detailed silhouettes depicting a typical campsite of the Corps of Discovery as they passed through on May 2, 1806. I noted on the plaque at the site that they traveled 19 miles that day.

Inside Lewis and Clark Trail State Park

"In early May of 1806, Lewis and Clark passed through here on their return from the Pacific Ocean heading east."

They traveled on the trail (Nez Perce) through what is now Dayton to this spot on the Patit Creek on May 2, and they were encamped there that night and started their return to St. Louis , Mo.

From the campsite they traveled up to Johnson Hollow, Turner and the King Grade to Tucannon east to Marengo Grade, through what is now Pomeroy to the Clear Water River, crossing the middle fork of the Lochsa River to their destination of Lolo Pass.

On June 27, 1806, the party neared the crest of Lolo Pass.

Captain William Clark in summing up the hardships of crossing and re-crossing Lolo Pass said he had "experienced cold and hunger of which I shall ever remember."

He noted that on the westward trip from September 14 to 19, 1805, snow fell on the party most of the time and that on the eastward journey between June 24 and 28, 1806, the snow drifrs had been 6- to 8-feet deep all the way.

Passable only there three months out of the year, the road into the land of the Nez Perce from the buffalo country was not an easy one. But over it and other difficult trails, in time to come, would travel a number of white men from the East, not all of whom would be as friendly and understanding as Captain Meriweather Lewis and Captain Clark."