westward expansion

As the colinies matured,adventuresome folks sought new opporttunites across the vast lands of america.

Traditionally, when one thinks of the expansion of the American West, the event most likely to come to mind is the California Gold Rush of 1849. While that profitable discovery did boost California's population by 80,000 eager prospectors, there remained an awful lot of land between the Pacific Coast and, say, St. Louis, Missouri. "Why mention St. Louis?" you might be asking. Because in actuality the young United States started exploring the vast land mass to the west from that very point and almost fifty years before those gold nuggets started hitting the pan in California.

In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent a secret message to Congress calling for an expedition into the area west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. He felt that an intelligent military man with perhaps a dozen hand-picked men could successfully chart the entire route and do it on an appropriation of roughly $2,500. Jefferson's message was secret because France owned the territory in question and such an expedition would surely be considered trespassing.

Then in July of the same year, Napoleon of France, in a surprise move, offered the whole Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15,000,000. America accepted and overnight the United States grew by about one million square miles, from the Mississippi to the Rockies and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

Shortly before this news, Jefferson had handed his personal secretary, Meriweather Lewis, whom he chose to lead the exploration, his instructions for the expedition "...explore the Missouri River and such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practical water communication across the continent, for the purposes of commerce". The President could not have been more clear in his directions.