Day-by-Day / October 28, 1803

October 28, 1803

Winding Ohio River

Leavenworth, IN[1]No known record exists of expedition’s travel between Louisville and Fort Massac. Using information from travelers of the period and Cramer’s 1802 river guide, The Navigator, one … Continue reading On or near this date, the expedition passes the Blue River and goes around the big bend of the Ohio. The river bends in this area are twenty miles long by water but only six miles by land.

Winding River

At sundown we called at a settlement on Kentucky shore and got pint of cream and 3 cabbages. The woman told us that it was 20 miles by water and only 6 by land.
Thomas Rodney[2]21 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), … Continue reading

Blue River Hills

[C]ame to Blue river, on the right, fifty yards wide.

The river hills, which are generally a considerable distance behind the banks below Louisville, now approached quite close on each side.
—Fortescue Cuming[3]Fortescue Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country: Through the States of Ohio and Kentucky, a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a trip through the Mississippi territory, and … Continue reading

 

Notes

Notes
1 No known record exists of expedition’s travel between Louisville and Fort Massac. Using information from travelers of the period and Cramer’s 1802 river guide, The Navigator, one conjecture is that the captains passed through the Blue River Hills on this day.
2 21 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 129.
3 Fortescue Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country: Through the States of Ohio and Kentucky, a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a trip through the Mississippi territory, and part of West Florida, commenced at Philadelphia in the winter of 1807 . . . (Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear, & Eichbaum, 1810), 237.

Discover More

  • The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.