On the path of Lewis and Clark from the Continental Divide to the Pacific

By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a seven-part series.

DISPATCH FROM LEMHI PASS, Sept. 18 — Depending on which side of the Continental Divide I stand, it is either 1:30 Pacific Time or 2:30 Mountain Time. I am in either Idaho or Montana. Time and place are that elastic on this mountaintop.

Here, it takes very little imagination to move from the 21st century and go back 200 years — 200 years and 37 days to be precise — to the moment when Capt. Meriwether Lewis climbed up this ridge with a three-man scouting party and took a step as momentous in its way as Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. With that step, he brought the Northwest into the history of the United States.

Very little has changed at Lemhi Pass since that day. The Indian track that Lewis followed was replaced by a stagecoach trail that now is a dusty forest service road. Discreet power lines run along the hills to the north. But to the east, the Rockies still stand like a snowcapped granite wall. And, to the west, the view is the same as it was: range upon range of mountains fading into the distance — a panorama that, in an instant, told Lewis he and his Corps of Discovery still had a long, long way to go before they would see the churning waves of the Pacific Ocean. [...read more...]