53. Deserts of America

Upper Missouri National WSR
28 miles northeast of Winifred, Montana
(view west, upstream)

"Deserts of America"

he explorers' grasp of the geography of the interior of the Northwest continued to evolve. At water level they estimated the distances between riverside landmarks and recorded their compass bearings, which were logged in daily lists of "courses and distances." On 26 May 1805, they traveled twenty-two and three-quarter miles in twenty-one courses, pausing at the end of the eleventh course, "Windsor’s Creek" (far right), now called Cow Creek.

Looking around, the Corps absorbed the shapes and colors of the river's borderlands. Here they noticed that the black rock in yesterday's bluffs had given way to soft, light sandstone overlaid by "a hard freestone of a brownish yellow colour." They were passing through a flicker of geological time, the ancestry of the mighty river, the ebbs and flows of glaciers. In practical terms, from the perspective of an eastern plantation owner, Clark judged that "this Countrey may with propriety...be termed the Deserts of America, as I do not Conceive any part can ever be Settled, as it is deficent in water, Timber & too Steep to be tilled."In Clark's time the word "deserts" denoted land that was apparently useless, whether or not it consisted only of sand and cactus.

From the summits of riverside hills such as these, they studied the horizons. On this day, from one of the heights near the center of this photo, Lewis thought he glimpsed the sun-glinted Rocky Mountains for the first time. His next thought was of "the difficulties which this snowey barrier would most probably throw in my way to the Pacific," although he was willing to expect "a good comfortable road untill . . . compelled to beleive differently." His sentiments were premature. What he saw (on the horizon in this photo) was an outlying range known today as the Highwoods, nearly a hundred miles east of the Rocky Mountain front, plus part of the Big Belt Mountains.

From Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air
Photography by Jim Wark
Text by Joseph Mussulman
Reproduced by permission of Mountain Press.