Museum of historic expedition to open in Metro East

HARTFORD, Ill. -- It was 199 years ago that explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark built a camp here to prepare for their historic trek across the uncharted United States.

Now a new museum a few miles from where Camp River Dubois once stood will commemorate the expedition and, supporters hope, put Illinois on the map as the place where the trip started.

"We want to tell the Illinois part of the story," Brad Winn, manager of the new Lewis and Clark Visitors Center, said Monday. "It's a largely untold story," he said.

The $7 million, 14,000-square-foot complex, which includes interactive murals, a 15-minute documentary and 50-foot replica of the keelboat used in the expedition, is scheduled to open Thursday. Admission is free.

The museum will remind visitors that, although preparations for the historic journey began as far eastward as President Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia, the expedition had only one jumping-off point -- across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, on what was then "the country's West Coast," Winn said.

Jefferson had commissioned the two to find a path from what is today Illinois to the Pacific Ocean right after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

"It was like going to the moon," Winn said.

"They didn't know what to expect."

The ship replica, which is cut through the middle so its insides can be viewed, shows visitors how the duo packed for the trip -- down to the ham that sat in barrels below decks, the tin cans of powdered soup and bundles of goods to trade with Native Americans. More than 40 men accompanied them.

The museum, which was more than four years in the making, survived a journey from inception to completion that nearly rivals Lewis and Clark's two-year sojourn along the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains and eventually to the Pacific Ocean.

It was originally supposed to open in time for this year's summer tourist season.

But the more than $200,000 needed to run the facility after its completion was at first omitted from Gov. George Ryan's cash-strapped 2003 budget.

It was eventually added -- after tourists had gone home, but in plenty of time for an expected national celebration at the site on May 14, 2004. The date marks the 200th anniversary of the expedition's departure from Illinois.

"We hope whenever anyone thinks of the Lewis and Clark journey, they think of the number-one site first," said David Blanchette, spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.