A Lewis and Clark year

For one weekend in November, the historic buildings in downtown Cape Girardeau will have some company from the past. Women and bearded men wearing 1803 fashions will walk about downtown, street musicians will play popular tunes of the day, horses and wagons and mules will parade down Main Street, the Mass that Sunday at Old St. Vincent's Church will be celebrated in Latin, and two men resembling explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark will arrive at founder Don Louis Lorimier's trading post called the Red House.

These are among the plans for the commemoration Nov. 21 through 23 of the 200th anniversary of the stop here by the explorers' Corps of Discovery on their journey to the West.

It's shaping up as a Lewis and Clark year, at least here, with Southeast Missouri State University's Homecoming celebration in the fall planning a Lewis and Clark theme. In addition, the Corps of Discovery II, a National Park Service exhibit that will follow the explorers' route on their way to opening up the West, has committed to stopping in Cape Girardeau the following weekend, Nov. 30 through Dec. 4. The exhibit is a traveling museum and classroom to be presented in two tents.

Corps II has two exhibit tents and a performance tent. Called the Tent of Many Voices, the performance tent seats 150 and will provide live demonstrations, lectures and audiovisual programs. The Corps of Discovery II will stop in more than 400 communities during the four-year commemoration.

Communities along the route followed by Lewis and Clark have scheduled their own celebrations. At Charleston, where the explorers transferred from the Ohio to the Mississippi River, there will be a ceremony at Bird's Point.

Beards encouraged

The Cape Girardeau Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee will encourage the city's men to grow beards for the occasion and wants everyone to wear period clothing that weekend. An encampment of four different re-enactor groups will be established at Red Star Access, formerly known as Honkers Landing, in downtown Cape Girardeau.

Lewis and Clark re-enactors from St. Charles who are traversing the entire route followed by the explorers will arrive on Nov. 21. The other groups at the boat landing are the host Zenon River Brigade, the Crowley's Ridge Black Powder Re-enactors from Dexter, Mo., and the Rock Ridge Muzzle Loaders Re-enactors from Southern Illinois. The encampment will be open to the public.

The Cape River Heritage Museum will be open with special exhibits about Lorimier and the expedition.

The following day, period craft demonstrations will be set up in empty storefronts on Main Street. There will be street musicians and a dance workshop. The Red House will be open to visitors, and local ministers are planning a church camp meeting that day.

On Nov. 23, Monsignor Richard Rolwing will wear priestly garb of the day when he says the Mass at Old St. Vincent's Church. Mayor Jay Knudtson and his wife, Cindy, will portray the Lorimiers in a re-enactment of the explorers' landing at Cape Girardeau 200 years before. At 11 a.m., a horse parade will pick up Lewis and Clark at the encampment and take them to the Red House. This is an attempt to capture the spirit of the historical facts, which are that Lorimier was attending a horse race when Lewis and Clark landed. Clark continued on up river to Cape Rock while Lewis stayed for dinner.

No horse race

The committee was unable to find a location downtown to hold a horse race, said Jane Jackson, chairwoman of the bicentennial committee.

Knapsacks of nonperishable food items will be for sale at the Red House for lunch. Performing at the Red House later will be Steve Schaffner, who directs the orchestra program at Central High School. He will portray Pierre Cruzatte, one of the fiddlers in the expedition.

Crafters are being sought. Docents also are needed for tours of the Red House Interpretive Center, which is scheduled to open Oct. 11. The part that forms the peak of the Red House roof is in place, topping out at 28 feet off the ground. Now the volunteer construction crews are putting on the roof skeleton and filling in the building's vertical log walls with stone at the corners exposed to weather and with mud under the porches and inside the building. The building's two fireplaces are nearly complete.

Construction is on schedule, said Steve Strom, who has been guiding that part of the commemoration. "We had weather delays during the winter, but we're hoping to get done in plenty of time."

The Red House will consist of three rooms which will hold exhibits about settlers in area, Lorimier, Native Americans, African Americans, Lewis and Clark and the four members of the expedition who returned to Southeast Missouri to live.

One of the rooms will be designed to look like the Red House living quarters.

Linda Nash, who teaches history at Jackson High School, is designing the rooms and exhibitions.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

Want to participate?

What: Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration

When: Nov. 21-23

Where: Downtown Cape Girardeau

For information: thebuzz.semissourian.com or www.capegirardeaucvb.org or the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau at 335-1631.