Lewis and Clark Monument
Pat Kennedy’s Lewis and Clark Monument is a fifteen-foot bronze group depicting Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Lewis’s Newfoundland dog Seaman. The two captains stand together in a forward-looking pose, dressed in the long coats, leggings, and broad-brimmed hats of expedition-era officers. Clark holds a rifle; Lewis carries a spyglass or rolled chart, with Seaman positioned at the men’s feet. The figures are set on a raised stone base inscribed with interpretive text, and the sculpture is sited along the Missouri River waterfront in Saint Charles. Kennedy modeled the group at heroic scale, with weathered surface detail in the faces, hands, and clothing intended to be read at a distance and from below.
The monument was dedicated in 1994, a decade before the bicentennial of the expedition but during the sustained public interest that built toward it. Saint Charles holds a particular place in the expedition’s chronology: the Corps of Discovery departed from the village on May 21, 1804, after Clark brought the keelboat upriver from Camp Dubois and Lewis joined the party from Saint Louis. Saint Charles was the last organized settlement of any size the expedition would see before reaching the Mandan villages, and it functioned as the practical jumping-off point of the journey west. Kennedy’s sculpture commemorates that departure rather than any single recorded incident, presenting the captains in the moment of setting out.
The monument stands in Frontier Park along the Missouri River in Saint Charles, near the reconstructed riverfront district that the city has developed around its expedition heritage. It is among the more frequently photographed public sculptures associated with the Lewis and Clark commemorative tradition, in part because of its placement on the actual route and its proximity to the annual Lewis and Clark Heritage Days reenactment, which Saint Charles has hosted since 1971. The work belongs to a wave of late-twentieth-century civic bronzes commissioned by river towns along the expedition’s path, a body of public art that expanded significantly in the years leading up to the 2003–2006 bicentennial observances. Specific provenance and funding details for the commission are not recorded here.
