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On this day in Lewis & Clark history...

Lewis dispatches the keelboat and crew from Cincinnati, Ohio with instructions to meet him at Big Bone Lick. Lewis will travel by land and investigate the mammoth fossils being excavated by Dr. William Goforth.

From the journals...

Cincinnati, October 3rd 1803.

Dear Sir [President Jefferson],
On the evening of the 1st inst. I again dispatched my boat with orders to meet me at the Big Bone lick, to which place I shall pass by land, it being distant from hence only seventeen miles while by water it is fifty three, a distance that will require my boat in the present state of the water near three days to attain.1

Meriwether Lewis

1Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents 1783 - 1854, 2nd edition. Edited by Donald Jackson.

Snippet from a book used by Meriwether Lewis to help navigate the Ohio River

Picture from The Navigator: Or, the Trader's Useful Guide in Navigating the Monongehela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by Zadok Cramer, Fifth Edition, published in 1806. Lewis used an earlier edition to help him navigate and describe the journey down the Ohio River.