Lewis & Clark Interpretative Center

July 27, 2009

Our work assignment today was to visit the Lewis & Clark Interpretative Center at Washburn ND. We would have visited here anyway, but we try to be flexible and indicated what a great idea it was to send us there. The sculture outside the center is a bigger-than-life size depiction of Lewis and Clark meeting with a Mandan chief.

The Corps of Discovery, consisting of 44 men, started on this epic journey up the Missouri River in a keel boat on May 14, 1804. The expedition arrived here on October 24, 1804, and decided to winter here with the Mandans across the river, who provided food throughout the winter.


The North Dakota Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center provides an overview of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, with special emphasis on the time spent at Fort Mandan during the winter of 1804- 1805. The displays include Native American artifacts, a buffalo robe we could touch and wear, as well as a "cradle-board" much like the one Sakakawea may have used to carry her baby. An authentic 3’x3’ wood canoe[pirogue] carved from the trunk of a large cottonwood tree, weighing 11 tons, demonstrates the winter preparations the Expedition made while at Fort Mandan.

The Interpretive Center's Bergquist Gallery, one of only four galleries in the world to house a complete collection, rotates the prints of Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist travelling with Maximilian, on a seasonal basis. Bodmer's watercolors and Maximilian's written descriptions are considered the most complete and reliable eyewitness account of the Upper Midwest Indian cultures.