Lewis and Clark atlas puts readers in keelboat

James D. Harlan, University of Missouri cartographer par excellence and James M. Denny, renown Lewis and Clark scholar with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, have created the definitive geographical book about the Lewis and Clark expedition within the state of Missouri. This beautifully illustrated, 138-page book combines the expedition's journal entries with original 1815 to 1819 U.S. General Land Office surveys and surveyor notes of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to recreate a historic landscape of Missouri in the early 1800s.

Twenty-seven maps or plates show Lewis and Clark's route from the Ohio River's confluence with the Mississippi River, the Mississippi River to St. Louis, and on up the Missouri River to the Iowa line. Expedition campsites; exploration sites; towns and villages; forts; the expedition course; historic hydrography; land grants; common fields; and historic land cover are included in each map. A couple of points I personally find intriguing are the overlay of these two mighty rivers showing them today and in 1803 and pinpointing of the Spanish and French land grants.

As I read the book, the reconstructed maps interwoven with the journal entries put me in the keelboat and pirogues with Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery seeing what they saw as they traveled up the Mississippi River from Nov. 20 to Dec. 13, 1803, up the Missouri River May 14 to July 18, 1804, and when they made their way back to St. Louis between Sept. 9 and Sept. 23, 1806. And, by the way, Cape Girardeau and our part of the Lewis and Clark story begins with Plate 1 in the book. This atlas will be a collector's item for Lewis and Clark scholars.

Jane Randol Jackson is director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center and chair of the Cape Girardeau Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.

RELATED WEB SITES

www.thebuzz.semissourian.com/ 116

www.capegirardeaucvb.org/bi centennial.html