SEPT 22: Lewis & Clark Approach End of Journey in St. Louis

A statue of American explorers William Clark (left) and Meriwether Lewis outside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center in Sioux City, Iowa. (Credit: Library of Congress)

On Sept. 22, 1806, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their Corps of Discovery approach Saint Louis on the Mississippi River after a journey of nearly 6,000 total miles. In two and a half years since they set off for the West, the expedition party made contact with more than 70 Indian tribes and produced 140 maps, as well as documented more than 200 new plant and animal species.

They landed on September 23 and drew little notice from the locals.

However, the expedition not only generated the first full accounting of lands northwest of the Mississippi River, but also triggered eventual migration by hundreds of thousands of settlers to the Great Plains, Oregon and California. It also initiated the dispossession of lands long held by indigenous tribes, caused death and destruction, and ruination of their respective cultures.