On May 14th 1804 the expedition led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left the St. Louis area and headed up the Missouri River. A year-and-a-half later, November 20th, 1805 they reached the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River.
On April 19th, 2011 I saw the mouth of the Columbia from the Astor Tower high above Astoria, Oregon. Fort Clatsop, where the Lewis and Clark expedition camped for the winter, is just off to the left. A little more than two months later, on July 1st, I was sitting beneath the Gateway Arch, the monument to the westward expansion of the United States.
Frustratingly I did not have enough time to visit the Lewis and Clark sites near Astoria. However, there was plenty of other things to see and do in Astoria.
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