Highlights Archives
Society Shares Lewis & Clark Documents on Web
May 14th marks the bicentennial of the departure of Lewis and Clark to explore the West. One hundred years ago the Society played a key role in documenting the expedition when director Reuben Gold Thwaites edited the first edition of all the original journals of participants and their scientific notebooks.Times have changed since then, and today the Society uses the Web to share its wealth of Lewis and Clark material. More than 3,000 pages of manuscripts, rare books, and contemporary maps and engravings from the Corps of Discovery are included in American Journeys. These include hand-written letters by Thomas Jefferson and William Clark, as well as the full text of the Thwaites edition with its marvelous introduction, footnotes, and appendices. Also included are dozens of illustrations of people and places the expedition visited by the German artist Karl Bodmer, who followed Lewis and Clark’s footsteps a generation later; these were scanned from the original engravings in the Society’s visual materials collection. American Journeys, built in 2003 with generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and private donors, is currently being used by about 700 readers each day, including dozens of schools and colleges around the nation.
:: Posted April 14, 2004
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