Clark's Canoe Camp on the Yellowstone

In the summer of eighteen oh six, on the journey home, William Clark split off from Meriwether Lewis to explore the Yellowstone River. He meant to canoe its whole length, but for days he could find no tree big enough to carve into a boat.

Near here, close to present-day Park City, he finally found cottonwoods large enough. Between the nineteenth and the twenty-fourth of July, Clark's party felled two great trees and shaped them into dugout canoes, each about twenty-eight feet long. To keep them steady in the current, the men lashed the two hulls side by side.

While some chopped with their three axes, others, nearly out of clothing, sewed elk and deer skins into garments. Then they launched and rode the Yellowstone east toward home and the reunion with Lewis.