Describe Lewis and Clark's journey around the Great Falls?

Answer 1

In order for the Lewis and Clark expedition to portage around the Great Falls they had to make makeshift wagons which were pulled by members of the expedition. They had to move their boats and supplies over 18 miles. It took nearly a month for them to get around the falls.

Answer 2

When the expedition reached this landmark they were relieved to learn they had followed the correct fork when the river split in two at the Marias River. In order to determine if the Marias could be the Missouri, the corps divided into two parties. Lewis and his men, going overland, were the first to reach the falls, actually a series of five waterfalls, the highest measuring eighty-seven feet, which they had heard about from the Mandan natives. On June 13, 1805, Lewis attempted to describe the "majestically grand scenery" but "after wrighting this imperfect description I again viewed the falls and was so disgusted with the imperfect idea which it conveyed of the scene that I determined to draw me pen across it and begin again, but then reflected that I could not perhaps succeed better than pening the first impressions of the mind; I wished for the pencil of Salvator Rosa or the pen of Thompson, that I might be enabled to give the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnificent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man..."

At the falls, Lewis first encountered a wolverine, and father on nearly wrangled with an angry grizzly bear. He ended the day in a face-off with three charging buffalo bulls. Reflecting, he wrote: "it now seemed to me that all the beasts of the neighborhood had made a league to distroy me, or that some fortune was disposed to amuse herself at my expence."

In order to pass the falls, the men pitched a portage camp near the mouth of Belt Creek and spent ten days constructing "carriage" to haul their boats and belongings seventeen miles. During this period the expedition was pounded by a severe hailstorm. At the Great Falls, the iron boat experiment failed to pass the test and was cached at White Bear Islands. Two caches were made in the vicinity of the falls, one near the lower Portage Creek site and the other on White Bear Islands; the latter contained Lewis' plant specimens from Fort Mandan and was subsequently destroyed by water.