| Summary: | The bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition promises to bring the past alive more than any event in recent northern plains history. This event will run through 2006. Signs posted along the state's highways beckon visitors to Fort Mandan (near present-day Washburn), proclaiming "Lewis and Clark slept here 146 times" nearly 200 years ago. Fort Mandan, and nearby Lewis and Clark visitors' center, will be major hubs for Voyage of Discovery buffs descending on the state in the next years. For those of you who don't yet hear the footfalls of history, this event could prompt a paradigm change and help you focus on the "third" dimension. This passage from an old book recently reached out and grabbed me. "The Blazed Trail of the Old Frontier," by Agnes C. Laut (published in 1926) described a cartoon published in a Life magazine of the times. The drawing featured a train crossing the western prairies. "On the observation platform were several stylishly dressed women and men, evidently bored," Laut wrote. "Under the picture were the words: "What a singularly dreary and uninteresting country." "All about the observation car group there appeared shadowy outlines of the explorers, fur traders, missionaries, voyageurs, hunters, the covered wagon crowd, buffalo, Indians and Indian fighters the air was full of those ghosts of the past. But the people on the train did not feel their presence." Agnes Laut wrote her travelogue while touring historic sites on the Great Plains with members of the Upper Missouri Historical Expedition. Perhaps nothing whets the appetite for history more than visiting places where a significant event took place standing on the spot and absorbing the moment, from the soles of your feet to your very soul. And that's just what the group was doing that July day in 1925 when it stopped at Verendrye, North Dakota, named for French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verendrye, who, in 1727, trekked across North Dakota from Canada to visit the Mandan Indians. The Verendrye site is located on a history-rich height of land between the loops of the Souris and Missouri rivers. "On this ridge," according to Laut, ".passed and paused La Verendrye, (map-maker David) Thompson, (fur trader Alexander) Henry, Lewis and Clark, and a host of other travelers." That 1925 expedition continued by rail across Indian hunting grounds to such places as the Mandan villages along the Missouri River and Fort Union near Williston, and then on into Montana. The sites they passed still echoed with the war cries of Indian battles, the thunder of bison hooves, the creaky wheels of the Metis Red River ox carts, the shrill whistle of steamboats, and the clang of hammer against spike to build the railroads. Chapter One - North Dakota Writers, Poets and Artists 25
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