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The city of Charlottesville, Va. followed up its removal of two controversial Confederate statues Saturday with the lightning-fast toppling of a third local landmark: a monumental tribute to explorers Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea. In an emergency meeting called with 20 minutes’ notice, the Charlottesville City Council voted unanimously to cancel another piece of public art targeted by left-wing activists. “I feel that it should just be melted down,” Rose Ann Abrahamson, a Sacagawea descendant, said during the council meeting, The Daily Progress reported. “I feel that it’s entirely offensive and it should be obliterated.”

Lewis and Clark Stop celebrating. They don't matter. By David Plotz Posted Friday, August 16, 2002, at 7:40 AM PT The American infatuation with Lewis and Clark grows more fervent with every passing year. The adventurers have become our Extreme Founding Fathers, as essential to American history as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson but a lot more fun. Last month, President Bush announced the Lewis and Clark bicentennial celebration, a three-year, 15-state pageant that begins Jan. 18 in Virginia and could draw as many as 25 million tourists to the Lewis and Clark trail by the time it wraps up...

After the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest from May 1804 to September 1806, meeting natives tribes along the way. Several years later, in 1831, three Nez Perce Indians and one Flathead Indian, traveled 2,000 miles, all the way from the Oregon Territory to St. Louis, Missouri, looking for the "Book to Heaven." The Bishop of St. Louis was Rev. Joseph Rosati (1789-1843), who later sent Pierre De Smet as one of the "Black robe" missionaries to the Indians. Bishop Rosati wrote in the Annals of the Association of the Propagation...

NASA's lunar mobile launcher is one step closer to sending its first spacecraft to the moon. The launcher is now in final testing for Artemis 1 — an uncrewed test trip around the moon of the Orion spacecraft slated for 2020 or so — after making its last solo trip to the Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B on June 27. The launcher will remain at the pad for two months before going inside the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to join the Orion capsule and its rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS). One day, this same system could...

When a rocket carrying the first module of the International Space Station blasted off from Kazakhstan in November of 1998, NASA officials said that the station would serve as an orbiting home for astronauts and cosmonauts for at least 15 years. It's now been over 18 years that the station has been continuously occupied by people. The place is impressive, with more living space than a six-bedroom house, two bathrooms and a large bay window for looking down at Earth. NASA and its international partners have spent decades and more than $100 billion to make the station a reality. The...

The United States was a mere 28 years old by the time Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the Corps of Discovery were working their way up the Missouri River. In 1804, the men were nearing present-day Doniphan, Kansas. They spotted a stream on the Kansas side of the river, and as Clark writes: “as this Creek has no name, and this day is the 4th of July, we name this Independence us. [U.S.] Creek.” That night, they camped at a spot which Clark called “one of the most butifull [beautiful] Plains, I ever Saw.” They would dub the area “Joe...

John Colter accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition, 1804-1806. Colter then traveled the mountain wilderness alone for months, being considered the first "mountain man." In 1807, Colter became the first person of European descent to see the Teton Mountain Range and traverse the area that became known as Yellowstone National Park. His description of bubbling mudpots, geysers and steaming pools of water, resulted in the area being named "Colter's Hell." In 1809, hundreds of Blackfeet captured John Colter. His friend, John Potts , was riddled with bullets and hacked to pieces. Wanting to make a sport out of killing...

D avid Thompson was a monumental figure in North American history. A fur trader, an explorer and perhaps the greatest land geographer ever, he led expeditions through incredible hardship and danger to safety. His 77 journals made important contributions to our understanding of culture, history and everyday life in North America before Europeans brought horses, guns, alcohol and disease. And he and his American Indian wife lived one of the great love stories of all time. So why havenÂ’t you heard of 19th-century frontiersman David Thompson? No doubt one reason is that he spent most of his long life in...

When explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark completed a trailblazing expedition across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean in 1806, they were revered as American heroes and their journals as literary classics. But Lewis's death three years later, at the age of 35, is now turning into a historical whodunnit as academics, scientists and generations of his descendants question whether he really committed suicide, as was accepted at the time, or whether he may have been felled by an assassin's bullets.

The foundation marked Gormley’s achievement with a donation of books — seven volumes of the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition — to the Tomlinson Library at Mesa State College. The journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark... were edited by Gary Moulton and published by the University of Nebraska Press. They are known among today’s historians as the best and most current version of the duo’s journey through the American West. Mesa State College Library Director Elizabeth Brodak said the fact that the books are forms of primary source material... “Anyone who wishes to get that flavor for...

Lewis and Clark stepped here! BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Sept. 14, 1997.) We went West for our summer vacation. Our idea was to follow in the footsteps of the hardy explorers Lewis and Clark, who traveled 8,000 miles through hostile, uncharted wilderness, a feat that was possible only because of their great courage and the fact that they left their children at home. Otherwise, they would have quit after maybe 200 yards. On our trip, we encountered numerous families that, after many hours together in the minivan, had reached Critical Hostility Mass. At...

Camping and Lewis and Clark BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on April 7, 1996.) Now that it's warmed up, I'm thinking about camping. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not thinking about actually going camping, in the sense of venturing outdoors and turning my body into an All-U-Can-Eat buffet for insects. I'm just thinking about camping. What got me on this topic is a book I'm reading, called ''Undaunted Courage,'' by Stephen E. Ambrose, about the ultimate camping trip: the Lewis and Clark expedition. If you're a product of the U.S. educational system, you no doubt...

Last month I had a couple of blog posts about the contest sponsored by the North Dakota National Guard that is offering 540 free trips (10 from each state and US territory), to North Dakota. Yes, FREE trips. In mid-February, only about 30 entries for this contest were received. The deadline to enter was February 28, but that has been extended to April 2. Medora, which is adjacent to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, is one of the destinations for winners of the contest; the contest is open to students who will be high school juniors or seniors in the upcoming...

...and according to AP, only 28 people have entered, 12 of them from North Dakota. Okay, let the jokes fly, but I've been to the Peace Garden State, and it's a great place. That's me below in 2004 running in the North Dakota Badlands near Medora, one of the places the winners--and their chaperones--will visit this summer. Anyone who knows any high schoolers who will be juniors or seniors next year should tell them about the North Dakota National Guard essay contest. From AP: A National Guard essay contest is offering 10 selected high school students from every state and...

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson asked two men – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark – to mount an expedition to explore the uncharted vastness of America’s new western territory. Two hundred years ago this week (11/16), the team they led -- known as the Corps of Discovery – completed a 2000-kilometer journey from the central state of Missouri and arrived at the Pacific coast. The Corps included a diverse team of men and… one of the most celebrated women in American history: Sacagawea. Her name has been bestowed on mountain peaks, streams, lakes and schools. Her portrait – as imagined...

I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the happiness of the human race or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence...[I resolve] In the future to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself." -Meriwether Lewis on his 31st birtday August 18, 1805 Camp Fortunate (Near present day Dillon, MT.) Captain Meriwether Lewis, along with Captain William Clark and the Corps of Discovery had left St. Louis 15 months earlier. Under his leadership, the Corps had traveled...

CHINOOK --- Construction of Station Camp, an eight-acre waterfront park honoring Lewis and Clark and the Chinook Nation, will resume as planned once archaeological work at the site is completed, the Washington Department of Transportation announced Tuesday. The Chinook National and the Washington State Historical Society have reached an agreement on the realignment of U.S. Highway 101 east of the Astoria-Megler Bridge. Highway work was suspended in January when archaeologists discovered a well-preserved impression in the soil of wooden planks, evidence that a Chinook Indian plank house may once have occupied the spot. Archaeologists welcomed the discovery as a chance...

Born Feb. 11, 1805, at Fort Mandan, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was the son of French Canadian interpreter, Touissant Charbonneau, and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. Lewis and Clark arrived in the Hidatsa-Mandan territory in October 1804 and hired the elder Charbonneau and Sacagawea as an interpreter team. The captains had learned that the Shoshones had a large herd of horses. They were eager to have Sacagawea, who spoke Shoshone, to accompany them to negotiate for horses needed to cross the western mountains, despite that she was six months pregnant at the time. While the expedition wintered at Fort Mandan, Lewis, on...

Sakakawea: Myths abound about origin, death of woman who aided Lewis & Clark By Patrick Springer, The Forum Published Sunday, January 09, 2005 Sakakawea ambled into recorded history one "clear and pleasant" morning in a way that endeared her to an explorer still getting acclimated to the harsh plains weather. Sgt. John Ordway noted in his journal that two American Indian women visiting the Lewis and Clark Expedition's winter camp, still under construction, came with welcome gifts - four buffalo robes. "I Got one fine one myself," Ordway wrote on Nov. 11, 1804, at Fort Mandan in what is now...

When Lewis and Clark reached North Dakota this month 200 years ago, the icy Missouri River forced them to set up camp for five months. They built wooden huts, nearly ran out of meat, and Clark lined his gloves with lynx fur to guard against the cold. A crew re-creating the explorers' 1803-1806 expedition will spend this winter, however, at home. "I'm looking forward to some sushi," said the crew's captain, Scott Mandrell, 39, of Alton. "That's one thing I've missed desperately, being able to run to Schnucks and buy some sushi." < SNIP > No one can call them...