Expedition place · August 31, 1803
Brunot Island
Described in the journal entry dated August 30, 1803
NPS High Potential Historic Site: Brunot Island (opens in a new tab)
Terrain360 · the place today
Brunot Island in 360°
10 frames across 0.9 mi of the route around this location
What happened here
Three miles below Pittsburgh, on the first day of the descent, the boat halted a few minutes at the island Lewis called Bruno’s Island. Gentlemen on shore invited him to try the air gun he had bought, and he fired it seven times at fifty-five yards. Then a guest, Blaze Cenas, who did not know how to manage the gun, let it go off. The ball passed through the hat of a woman about forty yards away and cut her temple. She fell, revived within a minute, and the wound proved slight. Lewis dated this entry August 30, but the departure was August 31.
Below the island, at the ripple off McKees Rocks, all hands climbed out and lifted the boat about thirty yards. Lewis was told the river was lower than it had been in four years. Two more riffles followed before the tired crew stopped for the night, at a camp somewhere in Allegheny County that cannot now be located. Lewis gave the men some whiskey and was in bed by eight.
The island is named for Dr. Felix Brunot, a French physician in Pittsburgh; Cramer’s river guide called it Hamilton’s Island. The National Park Service lists Brunot Island as a high potential historic site of the trail. It has held a power plant since George Westinghouse bought it in 1894 and is private, not open to the public.
In the journal
the ball passed through the hat of a woman about 40 yards distant cuting her temple
where we were obleged to get out all hands and lift the boat over about thirty yards; the river is extreemly low
Read the full research
- Pittsburgh to Wheeling, 1803: Lewis’s First Ten Days on the Ohio August 31 to September 9, 1803: Lewis’s descent of the upper Ohio, riffle by riffle, from his own journal, with the places, the people he met, and what the record leaves open.
Sources
- Meriwether Lewis, journal, entry dated August 30, 1803, in Milo M. Quaife, ed., The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1916), 31-32. (opens in a new tab)
- Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, vol. 2 (University of Nebraska Press), editor’s notes to the entry of August 30, 1803. (opens in a new tab)
- Zadok Cramer, The Navigator, 6th ed. (Pittsburgh, 1808), and 8th ed. (1814), entries for Hamilton’s Island. (opens in a new tab)
- National Park Service, “Brunot Island.” (opens in a new tab)
- National Park Service, Pittsburgh to the Pacific: High Potential Historic Sites of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (2022). (opens in a new tab)
Updated October 13, 2026
Nights the Corps camped here
- Aug 31, 1803 above Little Horsetail Rapids, PA (Lewis’s party)
NPS campsite reconstruction (Bergantino; Harlan where he is the only source). Source: National Park Service, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Park Atlas.
