Rudolph Mate · 1955 · overland

Rudolph Mate's 1955 film, the only major Hollywood picture on the Lewis and Clark expedition, freely dramatised around the Shoshone guide Sacagawea. After the Louisiana Purchase, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark are sent by Jefferson to find a route to the Pacific. Their Corps of Discovery poles up the Missouri by keelboat from near St. Louis, winters among the Mandan where Sacagawea joins them, hauls over the Continental Divide into her Shoshone homeland, and follows the Columbia down to the ocean. The romance the film invents is nonsense, but the westward line it traces, river, mountain and river again, is the real geography of the crossing.

1. 1
   St. Louis

   In 1804, charged by Jefferson to find a way to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark launch their Corps of Discovery up the Missouri from Wood River, near St. Louis.

2. 2
   Fort Mandan

   They winter among the Mandan and Minnetaree in present-day North Dakota, where the young Shoshone woman Sacagawea joins them as interpreter and guide.

3. 3
   The Continental Divide

   Hauling their boats to the headwaters and over the Continental Divide, they cross into the mountains of Sacagawea's own Shoshone people.

4. 4
   Fort Clatsop

   Following the Columbia down to the sea, they reach the Pacific at last and build Fort Clatsop to wait out the winter before the long road home.