Free Republic

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...

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...