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The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806), headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, was the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back.
While the Lewis and Clark expedition was the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast, it was preceded over a decade earlier by a Canadian expedition led by explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie, whose expedition completed the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico by a person not of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, in July 1793.
In 1804, the Louisiana Purchase sparked interest in expansion to the west coast. A few weeks after the purchase, President Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of western expansion, had the Congress appropriate $2,500 for an expedition. In a message to Congress, Jefferson wrote
| “ | The river Missouri, and Indians inhabiting it, are not as well known as rendered desirable by their connection with the Mississippi, and consequently with us. ... An intelligent officer, with ten or twelve chosen men ... might explore the whole line, even to the Western Ocean ... | ” |
Thomas Jefferson had long thought about such an expedition, but was concerned about the danger. While in France from 1785-1789, he had heard of numerous plans to better explore the Pacific Northwest. In 1785, Jefferson learned that King Louis XVI of France planned to send a mission there, reportedly as a mere scientific expedition. Jefferson found that doubtful, and evidence provided by John Paul Jones confirmed these doubts. In either event, the mission was destroyed by bad weather after leaving Botany Bay in 1788. In 1786 John Ledyard, who had sailed with Captain James Cook to the Pacific Northwest, told Jefferson that he planned to walk across Siberia, ride a Russian fur-trade vessel to cross the ocean, and then walk all the way to the American capital. Since Ledyard was an American, Jefferson hoped him success. Ledyard had made it as far as Siberia when Czarina Catherine the Great had him arrested and deported back to Poland.
