Rush Job

ewis located a suitable site for their winter encampment on the Netul (today's Lewis and Clark) River on December 5, 1805. Clark and the rest of the party reached it on the 7th and set up a temporary camp. On December 10, after clearing brush and trees from a small space in a forest, they began bulding the structure they were to officially name Fort Clatsop, after the neighboring tribe of friendly Indians.¹

Unlike Camp Wood (winter 1803-04) and Fort Mandan (winter 1804-05), the floor plan for Fort Clatsop was a square, as shown in a sketch Clark drew on the elk-skin cover of his elkskin-covered field journal. Moreover, they had spent 54 days building Fort Mandan, owing partly to the possibility of attacks by Sioux and Arikara Indians. They had slapped Camp Wood together in 18 days; Fort Clatsop was serviceable in 15.

They had the rooms framed in by the 14th, but roofing was a challenge that wasn't met until they found abundant Western redcedar or Sitka spruce trees that could easily be split into planks ten feet long, two feet wide, and an inch and a half thick. It was nonetheless time-consuming work, and even with some boards scrounged from some abandoned Indian houses, it was Christmas Eve before they had all their "huts" covered. Another chore was to chink the cracks between the wall logs with mud and moss to keep out the wind.

The men finished moving into their "huts" on Christmas morning, but another problem appeared. Whereas the captains' quarters featured a fireplace with a chimney, the original plan for the enlisted men's rooms was to dig fire pits in the floors and vent the smoke through holes in the roof. The persistent low-pressure weather systems made for poor draft, though, and the men had to rush to build "backs and enside chimneys" to make their quarters more comfortable.

For final touches they erected pickets and gates to enclose the compound, built a box to shelter the sentry from the rain, and dug two latrine pits outside the fort. Indoors, beds and bunk were built, and some desks and benches were made for the captains.

The fleas that moved in with the men on Christmas Day were intimate but unwelcome companions for the duration of their residence there. The Corps of Discovery departed Fort Clatsop for home on March 23, 1806.

--Joseph Mussulman

1. The name the captains transcribed as "Clatsop" is a Lower Chinookan word meaning "those who have pounded salmon." The Clatsops succumbed to diseases, or married foreign sailors and traders, and lost their identity as a nation before 1850. Many of their descendants are still living, however.