Stephen Ambrose · 1996 · overland

The Corps of Discovery, 1804-06. Sent by Jefferson to find a way across the newly bought Louisiana wilderness to the Pacific, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led their party up the Missouri from St. Louis, wintered among the Mandan, crossed the Rockies over Lemhi Pass with the help of Sacagawea, and rode the Columbia down to the western ocean - and back.

1. 1
   St. Louis

   In May 1804 the Corps of Discovery pushes off from near St. Louis and starts up the Missouri, some four dozen men rowing and poling a keelboat into a continent no American had mapped.

2. 2
   Fort Mandan

   They winter among the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the upper Missouri, where they hire the interpreter Charbonneau and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, who will guide and steady the expedition west.

3. 3
   Great Falls

   At the Great Falls of the Missouri the party spends weeks in a brutal portage around the cataracts, hauling the boats and baggage overland through prickly pear and grizzly country toward the mountains.

4. 4
   Lemhi Pass

   Crossing the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, they find the Shoshone - Sacagawea's own people - and barter for the horses they need to struggle over the snowbound Bitterroots by the Lolo Trail.

5. 5
   The Pacific

   Down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia they ride at last to the Pacific, wintering in the rain at Fort Clatsop before turning back east to carry their maps and discoveries home to a waiting nation.