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Here we are at the site of Lewis and Clark's "Camp Fortunate"--or above where it would have been. As with several other Lewis and Clark campsites or routes along rivers, this has been covered over by a reservoir of water backed up behind a modern dam. You are looking up the drainage basin for Horse Prairie Creek, which flows in from the west. It is joined here at Clark Canyon Reservoir with water from Red Rock River. (An interesting side note: Clark Canyon Dam sits right on the 45th parallel--exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole.)

Lewis and a few others walked ahead of the main party, which was moving slowly because of the hard work of bringing canoes laden with goods up the increasingly more shallow Beaverhead River. Lewis reached this point on August 10, 1805, camped one night, and then walked up an Indian trail that ran along this Horse Prairie Creek all the way up to the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass. He was desperate to find the Shoshone Indians and hopefully buy some horses from them, because without horses the expedition could not make it across the mountains. Just down below the west side of Lemhi Pass Lewis encountered the Shoshone. He saw that they were very fearful, but he was able to convince them he came as a friend. He persuaded some of them to come back with him to meet the rest of the party.

On August 17 they all arrived back at this point you see in the picture and met Clark and the rest of the group, who had finally gotten the canoes and baggage that far. When Sacajawea was brought into the group of leaders to help translate negotiations for the horses, she suddenly recognized the chief. It was her brother, Cameahwait, whom she hadn't seen in five years, since she had been captured by the Minnetaree Indians. She and her brother hugged and were very happy to be together again. It was then much easier for Lewis and Clark to obtain the number of horses they needed, with Sacajawea pleading their case with her people. The Shoshones had many horses, and they were willing to trade them for food and metal implements, because they needed both.

The expedition members and the Shoshones camped here from August 17 to 24, 1805. The expedition dug a huge hole in the ground to bury their canoes and other supplies, hiding them there for the return trip the next year. They called the hiding place a "cache," using the French word. They then loaded everything onto the horses that they would need for the trip over the mountains and on to the Pacific Ocean and began their trek over Lemhi Pass. There would be two more hard treks over more mountain ranges before they got to a navigable river where they could build new canoes and float down to the Columbia and on to the Pacific.

On the way back from the Pacific in July of 1806 Clark and some of the party came through here to dig up the canoes and float them back down the Beaverhead and the Jefferson to the Missouri River. Lewis and others of the group went a different route by land, on horses, and met Clark's group later, on the Missouri.

This camp was named "Fortunate" by the expedition because it was at this place that they finally found the Shoshones and the horses.

When Lewis and Clark's expedition reached this point on the Jefferson River, above the headwaters of the Missouri River, Sacajawea recognized this rock in the distance. Lewis wrote in his journal that night:

(August 8, 1805) "The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver's head from a conceived re[se]mblance of it's figure to the head of that animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it's source; which from it's present size cannot be very distant."

Beaverhead Rock has been known by that name ever since Lewis and Clark recorded it in their journals. They wrote it only in the English translation; we don't have a record of what Sacajawea called it in the Shoshone language.

Somewhere in this valley the name Jefferson for the river changes to Beaverhead, and from there on up to Clark Canyon Dam, at the confluence of Horse Prairie Creek and Red Rock River, it's known as the Beaverhead River.

Even though it was a hazy day when I took this picture, you can still make out the shape of the darker rock a little left of the middle of the picture. It does look sort of like a beaver whose head is on the left and whose tail slopes down to the right. I can imagine how happy it must have made Sacajawea to see it that day and know she was getting close to her home, from where she'd been captured five years earlier by another tribe of Indians. Sacajawea's news was very good news, indeed, to Captains Lewis and Clark, who desperately needed to find the Shoshone and trade for some horses to get their party over the mountains before winter set in. So they were also very happy that day.

At this place where the Jefferson River (straight ahead in the picture) joins with the Madison River (flowing in from beside where I was standing) the Missouri River actually begins. Just a short distance downstream, the Gallatin River flows in from the east. Because of this third river joining in so near the other two, the area is known as Three Forks. Clark and an advance party on foot reached this spot on July 25, 1805, ahead of Lewis and the main party coming up the Missouri with the canoes. Lewis and the rest arrived two days later. The company had learned of the Three Forks from Indians downriver along the Missouri. At this location Lewis and Clark knew they had accomplished one of the major goals set for them by Thomas Jefferson--to explore the Missouri to its headwaters.

They named the three rivers after President Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State James Madison (who would later be president), and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. Those names have been used for these three rivers ever since that time. (Not all of the names that Lewis and Clark bestowed on rivers and other geographical sites remained in use, but these did.)

Sacajawea told them that it was near here that she was kidnapped five years earlier by the enemy Hidatsas. Her people, the Shoshones, suffered other losses that day--several men, women, and boys were killed, and three other women and four boys were captured.

Lewis climbed the rock that you see in the second picture to take some celestial observations so that he could more accurately record the exact location ( latitude and longitude) of the headwaters of the Missouri. From Lewis' Rock he could also see further up the valleys of all three rivers to figure out which river would take them closest to the mountains they needed to cross in order to get to the Columbia River drainage. He and Clark agreed that the Jefferson River, flowing in from the southwest, would be the one most likely to get them where they needed to go. Also, Sacajawea told them that the most likely place to find the Shoshones would be along that river. They especially needed to find the Shoshones to purchase horses from them for crossing the mountains.

It was easy for me to imagine the Corps of Discovery being at this point, because the scene is essentially unchanged from how it must have looked to them two hundred years ago. I can imagine the sense of accomplishment they all felt, having come three thousand miles (4,828 kilometers) up the Missouri River from the Mississippi. I can also very easily sense their urgency to find the Shoshones and get on the way over the mountains on horseback.

The gap in the rocks across the lake is the upper end of a narrow canyon that the Missouri River flows through, near Helena. Lewis named the canyon the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. Today the canyon is called simply the Gates of the Mountains. On Lewis and Clark's journey up the river, only Lewis saw the canyon. Clark and a small party had struck out on foot ahead of the canoes and were walking far enough away from the river channel that Clark never realized the canyon was there. He didn't see it on the return journey, either, because his half of the party left the Missouri at Three Forks to cross on horseback over a range to the Yellowstone River and then floated down that to the confluence with the Missouri.

Lewis' journal entry for July 19, 1805, describes the canyon:

"this evening we entered much the most remarkable clifts that we have yet seen. these clifts rise from the waters edge on either side perpendicularly to the hight of 1200 feet [366 meters]. every object here wears a dark and gloomy aspect. the tow[er]ing and projecting rocks in many places seem ready to tumble on us. the river appears to have forced it's way through this immence body of solid rock for the distance of 5 3/4 Miles [9.3 kilometers] and where it makes it's exit below has th[r]own on either side vast collumns of rocks mountains high. the river appears to have woarn a passage just the width of it's channel or 150 yds. [137 meters] it is deep from side to side nor is ther in the 1st. 3 Miles [4.8 kilometers] of this distance a spot except one of a few yards in extent on which a man could rest the soal of his foot. several fine springs burst out at the waters edge from the interstices of the rocks. ....It was late in the evening before I entered this place and was obliged to continue my rout untill sometime after dark before I found a place sufficiently large to encamp my small party. ...from the singular appearance of this place I called it the gates of the rocky mounatains.

The river level in the canyon is thirty feet (9 meters) deeper today than Lewis saw it because of a dam that was built downstream from the canyon. There are boat trips one can take down through the Gates of the Mountains, but they don’t begin until Memorial Day. I saw this place on May 11, and there was no way to find anyone with a boat who could take me through it that early in the season. I leave it as a place to be explored when I come back this way. And come back I will, to this fascinating river!

Here, near the present-day town of Great Falls are the remains of two of the once-mighty falls in the Missouri River. The first one is Black Eagle Falls, the uppermost falls in the river and the last ones that Lewis saw as he walked ahead of the boats to find the falls. The falls in the second picture are called Rainbow Falls.

After seeing Black Eagle Falls Lewis wrote in his journal:

"A beatifull little Island well timbered is situated about the middle of the river. in this Island on a Cottonwood tree an Eagle has placed her nest; a more inaccessable spot I beleive she could not have found; for neither man nor beast dare pass those gulphs which seperate her little domain from the shores. the water is also broken in such manner as it descends over this pitch that the mist or sprey rises to a considerable hight."

Rainbow Falls is a few miles downriver of Black Eagle Falls. Lewis was entranced by all five falls, and he wrote poetically about them in his journal. About Rainbow Falls, he said:

"I was again presented by one of the most beatifull objects in nature, a cascade of about fifty feet [15 meters] perpendicular stretching at rightangles across the river from side to side to the distance of at least a quarter of a mile [402 meters].   here the river pitches over a shelving rock, with an edge as regular and as streight as if formed by art, without a nich or brake in it; the water decends in one even and uninterupted sheet to the bottom wher dashing against the rocky bottom [it] rises into foaming billows of great hight and rappidly glides away, hising flashing and sparkling as it departs    the sprey rises from one extremity to the other to 50f [15 meters]. I now thought that if a skillfull painter had been asked to make a beautifull cascade that he would most probably have p[r]esented the precise immage of this one."

Marring the beauty of Rainbow Falls is another of the dams that were built in the early 1900s to provide electricity to the town of Great Falls.

Lewis and Clark had expected a single falls, taking their information from Indians downriver who told them about the place. They were very disheartened to find not one but five falls spread over a twenty-mile (32 kilometers) section of the mighty river. Clark surveyed a route across land that the men could use for hauling the canoes on crude trailers made of cottonwood frames and wheels. The portage route was more than eighteen miles (29 kilometers) long. Getting all boats and supplies past the falls took eleven days to accomplish, and the men were exhausted by the effort. The work was made more difficult by prickly pear cactus, heat, rain, hail, wind, and mosquitoes. During this time Sacajawea was seriously ill and carrying her fourteen-week-old baby. There was quite a celebration at the end of the portage, as Sacajawea recovered and the company celebrated the Fourth of July. That year the United States was 29 years old.

Charlie Russell was only 16 years old when he came to Montana in 1880 from St. Louis. For the next eleven years he worked as a cowboy, until he became a full-time artist. At that time he made his home in Great Falls with his wife Nancy. He painted the working life of the cowboys with great accuracy and emotion. He was a good friend of the Indians and painted their stories and daily lives with honesty and reverence for their traditions. His paintings hang all over the world, but the greatest concentration of them is in this museum in Great Falls, on the same city block as his studio and the house in which he and Nancy lived.

The statue of Charles M. Russell stands in front of the modern museum, and the studio is on the other side of the block, behind the museum. He threw the antlers up onto the porch roof, himself. They remain there today. Russell loved to entertain his friends and guests in his studio, fixing them simple cowboy meals on the hearth and then sitting around the table with them telling stories of the old cowboying days. He mourned the passing of the Old West and was determined to preserve its flavor and history in his paintings. He succeeded brilliantly.

The sign reads:

The monument on the hill above was erected by the Great Northern Railway in 1925 to commemorate the farthest north point reached by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Captain Meriwether Lewis, with three of his best men, left the main party at the Missouri River and embarked on a side trip to explore the headwaters of the Marias River. He hoped to be able to report to President Jefferson that the headwaters arose north of the 49th parallel, thus expanding the boundaries of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. The party camped on the Cut Bank River July 22-25, 1806, in "a beautifull and extensive bottom." Deep in the territory of the dreaded Blackfoot, the men were uneasy. Lewis wrote, "game of every description is extremely wild, which induces me to believe the indians are now, or have been lately, in this neighbourhood." Lewis could see from here that the river arose to the west rather than to the north, as he had hoped. Disheartened by this discovery, by the cold rainy weather, and by the shortage of game, Lewis named this farthest point north Camp Disappointment, the actual site of which is four miles directly north of this monument.

I drove up the dirt road to the monument, and took a picture of the cement obelisk. I won't show it on this website because it has been so badly defaced with spray paint. The monument sits on Blackfeet Reservation land.

The little creek in the second picture is Cut Bank River, one of two rivers that flow together to form the Marias River. It was the more northerly of the two rivers, so Lewis followed it up far enough to see that its course wasn't going to help the United States claim land further north than the 49th parallel. While at this campsite Lewis took surveying measurements to determine the exact latitude and longitude of the site. Those measurements make it easy for historians today to pinpoint exactly where the camp was. The site is on private land, inaccessible to the public.

On the south bank of the Yellowstone River, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Billings, sits this limestone rock, which you can see in the distance, to the left of the sign. The sign reads:

The Crow Indians called this rock 'Place Where the Mountain Lion Dwells.' It was a well-known landmark to Plains Indians. It was here, at a strategic natural crossing of the Yellowstone River, or Elk River, as it was known to the Crow, that the Indian people met to trade and exchange information. They painted pictographs and etched petroglyphs onto the sheer faces of the rock. ...It was also a significant landmark for Euro-American explorers, fur trappers, soldiers, and emigrants. On July 25, 1806, it was visited by a 12-man detachment under the command of William Clark that included Sacajawea and her infant son. Clark carved his name and the date on the rock and named it in honor of Sacajawea's son. He was just one of hundreds of individuals who for generations have left their marks on the rock.

Clark and this group were exploring the Yellowstone River on their way east, near the end of the journey. They would meet up with Lewis' group a few days later at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. Clark wrote in his journal the day he climbed the rock:

"The Indians have made 2 piles of Stone on the top of this Tower...[and] have ingraved on the face of this rock the figures of animals &c. near which I marked my name and the day of the month & year."

In the second picture you can see what Clark carved in the rock that day. It is now protected by a shatterproof covering to preserve it. It is the only physical marking made by the explorers that remains along their route. (They carved their names in trees at the Pacific Ocean, but of course those trees have not survived the passing of nearly two hundred years.)

Sacajawea's son was named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, but Clark always called him Pomp or Pompey--nicknames that Clark gave the baby. Pomp was seventeen months old on the day that Clark named this rock Pompey's Tower. (Others later changed the word "Tower" to "Pillar.") A few weeks later Pompey, his mother Sacajawea, and his father Touissant Charbonneau left the expedition when it reached the Mandan village on the Missouri River. That was where they had joined up with Lewis and Clark a year and a half earlier. Pompey remained with his parents another few years after the expedition departed for Saint Louis. Clark wanted to provide an education for Pompey when the boy was school age, so as a young boy Pompey went to live with Clark's family and was later educated in Europe. He was in his sixties and living in California when word came of the Montana gold rush. He was on his way to Montana to search for gold when he came down with pneumonia in Oregon and died.