LEWIS AND CLARK (1804-06): GEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL RESOURCES OBSERVATIONS ACROSS THE GREAT PLAINS

The discipline of geology as we know it today was in its infancy in 1804 when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery started their journey up the Missouri River. President Thomas Jefferson charged Lewis and Clark among other things to accurately record the positions of rivers, mountains, and other features, to note the land's economic potential for farming, for mineral and water resources, and so on on this journey. The Corps first encountered the Great Plains in Nebraska in early July of 1804. From there to the Rocky Mountains in Montana and on their return in 1806 across the Great Plains they described many geologic features and phenomena in their journals. Their observations can be partially divided into those on fluvial and eolian sedimentology and geomorphology (changes in the courses and channel features of the Missouri River and its tributaries, sand dunes, etc.), environmental geology (landslides), stratigraphy (changes in formations seen along the rivers), economic geology (locations of coal beds,and other mineral deposits), water resources (locations of springs and other potable water sources, mineralized waters), geomorphology (landforms such as plains, buttes, prominent cliffs, rapids), provenance studies (differences in gravel compositions from one river to another), paleontology (fossils from formations),and quality of soils and lands (good farm land, gumbo, saline, etc.). Even though they were not trained geologists most of their geological observations still hold true. It is possible today to follow their routes and to verify many of their observations on these and other geologic subjects in the areas where they originally described them.