Historical sleuth tracks explorers’ path

By DAVID HORSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST

Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a seven-part series.

DISPATCH FROM DISMAL NITCH, Sept. 25 — I just parked my Jeep in a rest area on the north shore of the Columbia River a quarter-mile east of the Astoria Bridge. It was near here that Lewis and Clark’s moment of triumph turned into a week of dismal, storm- ravaged misery.

And it was here that a local man named Rex Ziak solved a riddle that professional historians had bypassed for 100 years.

I go over to meet Ziak as he climbs out of his truck and he picks up the conversation pretty much where we left off after dinner last night. Actually, it’s less a conversation than it is Ziak’s monologue, but I do not mind a bit because the story he tells is fascinating.

Ziak (pronounced “zeek”) was born across the river in Astoria and raised in the little town of Naselle here in Washington’s logging country. Growing up, he heard the usual simplified version of the Lewis and Clark tale — how they came down the Columbia and set up camp at Fort Clatsop over in Oregon — and he didn’t think much more about it.

Then, in 1991, Ziak got interested in this riddle: Two months elapsed between the time Lewis and Clark left Canoe Camp on the Clearwater River in present-day Idaho and the time they began to build Fort Clatsop. During the first month, they traveled nearly 500 miles. During the second month they traveled less than 20. What in the world were they doing during that second month? [...read more...]