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Lewis and Clark
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Lewis and Clark

WITF, Inc.

Transcript:
Few Americans realize that the celebrated Lewis and Clark expedition–which first mapped the U.S. interior from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean–actually began in Pennsylvania.

Knowing that this expediition would require months of preparation, President Thomas Jefferson sent Merewether Lewis to Philadelphia, then the intellectual capital of North America, for further specialized studies with some of the country's leading scholars in mapmaking, medicine, natural history and anthropology.

Here, too, Lewis found specialized merchants from whom he purchased more than thirty-five hundred pounds of equipment. These expenditures provided the life necessities for the 28 month venture. Lewis then travelled to Pittsburgh, to oversee the construction of the 54 foot riverboat that would carry his men up the Missouri River.

At the conclusion of the journey the maps and journals were sent to Philadelphia in preparation for publication for the world.
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