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.

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.

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.

Emory Strong and Ruth Beacon Strong have used excerpts from the Reuben Thwaites edition of the Lewis and Clark journals that focus on the native population the Corps of Discovery came in contact with on their journey from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean. Following their journey from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Ocean, the Strongs supplied this book with over 200 photographs, many of them sites that have been since consumed by geological, riverine or human forces.

Although it was 1806 when Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis after their journey across the country, it was not until 1905 that they were celebrated as national heroes. In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark examines how public attitudes toward their explorations and the means of commemorating them have changed, from the production of the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905 to the establishment of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail in 1978 and the celebrations of the expedition's bicentennial from 2003 through 2007. The first significant stirrings of national public interest in Lewis and Clark coincided with the beginning of a nationwide fascination with transcontinental automobile touring. Americans began to reconnect with the past and interact with the history of Western expansion by becoming a new breed of "frontier explorer" via their cars. As a result, early emphasis on local plaques and monuments yielded to pageants, reenactments, and, ultimately, attempts to retrace the route, promoting conservation and recreation along its length. Wallace G. Lewis details the ingenuity that inspired the establishment of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, opening a window to how America reimagines, recreates, and remembers its own past. In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark will appeal to both scholarly and armchair historians interested in the Western frontier as experienced by both Lewis and Clark and those retracing their steps today.

With a spirit of exploration rarely seen in modern times, Ben Long and his wife, Karen Nichols, quit their jobs, sold their house, and set out to follow in the footsteps of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their quest: To look at the plants and animals encountered during the Corps of Discovery's great endeavor and report on how nature is doing after two centuries of "civilization." Long's voice is appealing, and readers will have no trouble imagining themselves traveling along with the couple in their fully loaded Subaru. Long and Nichols drove from Montana to the Pacific, checking on Lewis and Clark's natural "discoveries" along the way: prairie dogs, cutthroat trout, sharptail grouse, coyotes, beavers, bison, grizzlies, whitebark pine, even a dinosaur fossil. Everywhere, they encounter another persistent force of nature -- human nature. This highly readable travelogue is informed by humor, history, the sacred journals of Lewis and Clark, and the vivid experience of discovery.