It has been 200 years since their epic trek across Western America, yet Lewis and Clark still evoke strong emotions. For good or ill, the captains redefined America's sense of identity, and interest is at an all-time high in reexamining their expedition and its effects. Timed for publication amid the four-year bicentennial celebration of their journey, this book retraces the path taken by Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery from 1804 to 1806. The author draws on the explorers’ journals and period illustrations for historical context, and complements this material with modern color photography from the roads and rivers along the trail blazed by Lewis and Clark. Readers will also hear from history enthusiasts who are enamored by the explorers’ feats as well as from those who view Lewis and Clark as villains.

Few events in American history have shaped the nation like the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It opened the American West for settlement. It redrew the map of the United States. It identified an array of native peoples, spectacular places, fascinating creatures, and extraordinary flora unknown in "civilized" America. It defined the American nation as a land stretching from coast to coast-and it launched the spread of population in a mighty frontier migration unlike anything ever witnessed in America before or since. Lewis and Clark on the Trail of Discovery contains 19 chapters, detailing the expedition chronologically. A "museum in a book," this fascinating volume contains re-creations of original documents such as diary entries, letters, maps, and sketches-all meticulously reproduced so that the reader can actually handle and examine them. Among the documents included in the book are: The actual letter of credit Jefferson wrote to Lewis committing the U.S. government to pay for the expedition. The code Thomas Jefferson provided to Lewis for sending secret messages. Clark's sketch of the technique some Indians used to flatten their heads, a sign of prestige. Clark's letter of gratitude to Sacagawea, a Shoshone teenager who helped the expedition. A newspaper account of the expedition's return to St. Louis.

This edition contains no advertising, and is stitch-bound. It covers the whole story of the expedition, beginning east of the Mississippi River as Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis planned, and Lewis trained and traveled. Then follows Lewis and Clark and company to the Pacific and back to St. Louis. Accessible history text combines with tourism information on following their path today, and maps combine both then and now.

Describes the journey of Lewis and Clark through the western United States, focusing on the plants they cataloged, their uses for food and medicine, and the plant lore of Native American people.

Includes works of art by the following artists : Charles Wilson Peale, Michael Haynes, William Jacob Hays, Sr., Alfred Jacob Miller, Karl Bodmer, Frederic Remington, L. Edward Fisher, Carl Wimar, Stanley Meltzoff, Charles M. Russell, E.S. Paxson, Charles B.J. Fevret, George Caleb Bingham, Charles Deas, John F. Clymer, George Catlin, Gary P. Miller, Gary R. Lucy, Charles Fritz, Ron Ukrainetz, Alfred Bierstadt, John Mix Stanley, Paul Kane, Alfred Bierstadt.

In The Lewis & Clark Trail American Landscapes, the vistas and majesty of the Lewis & Clark Trail have been brought to life in a magnificent set of 248 color photographs. Richard spent two years visiting key locations along the Lewis & Clark Trail ¿ by plane, auto, and on foot ¿ shooting specific locations at the same time of year as was originally experienced some 200 years ago. The result is an extraordinary set of images capturing the incredible diversity of the American landscape. The Lewis & Clark Expedition ¿ also known as the Corps of Discovery ¿ is regarded as one of the epic stories in American history. The trail stretches across the American landscape starting in St. Louis and followed the Missouri River through the woodlands of the Midwest, onto the Great Plains across Montana, entered the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho, and glided down the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean. The pioneering exploits of the Corps of Discovery have been thoroughly chronicled in thousands of pages of narrative by historians as well as in the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. These words, detailing the sense of discovery and the wonder of viewing untouched landscapes, essentially were the only ¿pictures¿ from this expedition. Until now.