Successful? Or a big bust?

The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial: Leaving a Legacy

By Marjorie Smith, 10-02-06

I guess it’s all over. According to Yellowstone Public Radio’s wonderful “Day by Day With Lewis and Clark” series, the Corps of Discovery made it back to a heroes’ welcome in St. Louis two hundred years ago last week so the bicentennial celebration must be finished. I disagree with the people who thought it was a big bust. Okay, probably no one got rich on it – at least no one in Montana – but the observance will have left a valuable legacy.

For one thing, as pointed out in recent OpEd piece by Bozeman author Landon Jones, there’s the expanded understanding of the effect the expedition had on the West. While it may not have originally been a large part of the plan for the bicentennial observances, by the time the anniversary years were actually upon us, we all gained an appreciation for the impact the expedition had upon the Native American people.

For me, personally, one of the best aspects of the bicentennial was the radio series produced by Leni Holliman of Yellowstone Public Radio. Working with several scholars and actors, Leni produced 627 episodes (125 weeks worth) of “Day by Day with Lewis and Clark.” The programs ran throughout Montana on the YPR network as well as Montana Public Radio out of KUFM in Missoula. Leni says KUOW in Seattle ran the parts of the series that covered the time the explorers spent in the Pacific Northwest while some stations on the East Coast picked up selected segments. Each episode lasted from two and a half minutes to four minutes, depending upon how much material there was in the journals for that day. “It was quite a challenge for the writers,” says Leni. “Some days there was so little material in the journals they really had to stretch to fill two and a half minutes. Other days so much happened they had a terrible time cutting it down to four minutes.”

Ever since the little programs hit the airwaves on May 14, 2004, I really felt like I was a part of the celebration, and almost a part of the expedition. Most importantly, I gained an almost visceral understanding of how long the expedition took. The things that have happened in my life since the Corps of Discovery left St. Louis on May 14, 2004 (well, okay, 1804) underline how long the expedition members were gone from what was their known world. In that time, I wrote and co-produced one play, directed another, co-produced four others, acted in two, married off my daughter (the most elaborate theatrical production of all), and played six Oktoberfests in four different counties with the Awesome Polka Babes. During the same time it took the expedition, close friends bought a lot, sold their condo, moved in with my mother while they had a house built, moved into that house and just completed their second summer landscaping the place. What I’m getting at is this: that expedition in 1804-1806 was one long trip.

Having already participated in two family float trips on the scenic upper Missouri in 1999 and 2002, I felt no need to join the hordes of tourists author Stephen Ambrose had predicted would descend upon Montana for the bicentennial. However, I did brush across some of the observances, purely by good luck. In July of 2005, returning from a polka babe gig in Miles City, we stopped on impulse at Pompey’s Pillar – only to discover that it was exactly the 199th anniversary of the day William Clark left the most famous graffiti in the West on that large rock. All around the pillar folks were celebrating William Clark days with demonstrations of early 19th Century skills like canoe carving and blacksmithing. The crowds were not huge, but they were appreciative. Behind the celebrations, the new Interpretive Center was slowly rising – apparently a year or so behind schedule, but even so, a really wonderful facility once it opened Memorial Day weekend of this year.

I visited Pompey’s Pillar again this summer when my friend Kayoko Yoshida, a professor of English at a college in Sapporo, Japan, arrived in Montana on one of her periodic research expeditions. This year, she was making educational videos that will be posted on a website where Japanese students of English can practice their English comprehension and learn something interesting at the same time. Kayoko’s topics included Sacajawea and the Lewis and Clark expedition and she arrived with some grant money to finance a brief trip around Central Montana.

We started at Sacajawea Park in Livingston where Kayoko filmed the beautiful new sculpture of the young Indian mother with her young son. It was there that we first came upon the lovely gardens of native plants which had been planted at various L&C sites around the state: prickly pear cactus, the bitterroot (Montana’s amazing state flower), the flax named for Lewis and the wildflower named for Clark.

Heading east we stopped at the Crazy Mountains Museum just outside Big Timber and saw four actual plant samples collected by the expedition and miraculously still preserved more than 200 years later.

Slightly off the L&C trail – but very much a result of the expedition’s impact as we now appreciate it – Kayoko and I visited the Little Big Horn Battlefield. I remember visiting it several times in the past, when it was still known as the Custer Battlefield (although the memorial cemetery was first established in 1879,it wasn't until 1991 that the name was changed to acknowledge that the Americans known as Indians had also died there). Since the beautiful Indian memorial was dedicated three years ago, the whole experience is much more moving. I recommend a visit (or revisit) to anyone with any interest in Montana – and America’s -- history. With a sculpture based on a ledger drawing of warriors riding off to war, one leaning back to kiss his wife farewell, the Indian monement is a work of art whose poignancy rivals the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The new interpretive center at Pompey’s Pillar is indeed impressive and adds a great deal to our understanding of William Clark’s return journey down the Yellowstone. The center is one of those new “hands on” museums, and Kayoko, being a small adult, fit into the Indian-style leather dress provided for children to try on. I photographed her consorting with the life-size mannequins of Sacajawea and her son.

Kayoko and I also returned to one of our mutual favorite Montana towns, Fort Benton, to collect more video footage with the statue of Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea overlooking the Missouri. Although the new Upper Missouri Interpretive Center had still not opened when we were there in late August, Fort Benton is rich in historic monuments, museums and sights – including the monuments to the faithful sheep dog Shep, the agricultural museum of the northern Great Plains, the reconstructed old fort, and the gorgeously restored Grand Union Hotel to say nothing of the river itself. Surely none of the tourists who did follow the Lewis and Clark trail felt cheated because the BLM center wasn’t open yet – and once it is open, there will be another excuse to return to Fort Benton. When we were filming at the heroic statue of Lewis, Clark, Sacajawea and little Pomp (erected in 1976 as Montana’s contribution to the U.S. Bicentennial celebration) we did meet a couple from Washington state whom we’d also seen at the Little Bighorn. They had been on the Lewis and Clark trail for almost a year (and confessed that they were glad their trek was almost over).

Kayoko and I went on to Great Falls to revisit the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at Giant Springs. I think it was our 1999 visit to this museum and the vivid images it provides of the arduous 1805 portage around the Great Falls that had inspired Kayoko to help Japanese students learn more about the expedition.

Finally, on the final day of our tour, we hurried back to the Gallatin Valley to film at the headwaters of the Missouri just before dark. The next day we finished up by filming the Gallatin Valley's tribute to the young Indian explorer: the sculpture on North Seventh with Sacajawea peak, the highest point in the Bridger Mountain range looming in the distance; the Sacajawea Middle School.

All along the way, we were impressed by the new informative roadside kiosks and signs we encountered. I’m assuming that the sprucing up of historic signs and adding of new pullouts were inspired by the L&C bicentennial. Regardless of the bicentennial’s being over, these facilities are now part of our tourist infrastructure. Barring the idiocy of vandalism, they should be available to us, our kids and our visitors for many years to come. (My Livingston relatives told me that the statue in Sacajawea Park had been defaced just a few days after its dedication, but by the time Kayoko and I arrived, it had been cleaned up.)

Back in 1999, after my family’s first float trip on the Upper Missouri, my Great Falls-based cousin grumbled about Stephen Ambrose’s recommendation that Montana prepare for hundreds of thousands of people who would share his own fascination with the L&C expedition and hit the trail. We shuddered together at the idea of concrete-paved campgrounds along the river where we had just shared an experience with the Corps of Discovery as we dodged prickly pear while pitching our tents. At the only formal campground we used that year, just a day’s float upstream of the Fred Robinson Bridge where US 191 crosses the Missouri, a cottonwood tree had fallen and broken a concrete picnic table. I’ll confess that after five days on the river, we were all happy to use the BLM toilet facility, but we were also delighted that the eight of us didn’t have to share the campground with anyone else and thought perhaps the tree had been affronted by excessive concrete . Just in case it was campers the trees objected to, we chose our tent sites with care that evening.

Perhaps I’m reflecting the typical “let’s keep Montana the way I like it” attitude, but I’m not unhappy that the hordes of L&C tourists failed to materialize. I am also grateful for the new interpretive kiosks and centers and for the enhanced understanding I’ve gained of our history over the past three years. Considering how quietly the original expedition passed through two hundred years ago (well, except for all that gunfire as they hunted for their daily dinner), I think we’ve observed the bicentennial in a very appropriate manner.

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