On this day in 1806, Lewis & Clark began their famous expedition.

“Left Pittsburgh this day at 11 o’clock with a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage.”[5] With those words, written on August 31, 1803, Meriwether Lewis began his first journal entry on the epic Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Ocean.

Lewis declared the mouth of the river Dubois (on the east side of the Mississippi across from the mouth of the Missouri river) to be the expedition’s official point of departure, but the two and one-half months spent descending the Ohio River can be considered its real beginning.

Clark made most of the preparations, by way of letters to Jefferson. He bought two large buckets and five smaller buckets of salt, a ton of dried pork, and medicines.

Word has it they didn’t have a sleep number bed either. How primitive! You can find out more about this day in history at Those Were The Days, and InfoPlease.

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