Expedition place · September 2, 1803
Logstown
1 journal entry · Recorded by Meriwether Lewis
Terrain360 · the place today
Logstown in 360°
10 frames across 1.8 mi of the route around this location
What happened here
The day began two and a half miles below camp with another riffle, and at nine o’clock the boat reached Logtown riffle. The men unloaded, got over with difficulty after four hours, and then found themselves stranded again. Lewis hired one horse and an ox for a dollar to get across, and grumbled that the people living by the riffles made their living from travelers’ distress.
The riffle took its name from Logstown, a village of Shawnee, Delaware, Iroquois and others founded before 1748, which stood near present Ambridge in Beaver County. Lewis spent part of the day describing the valley: hills of three to four hundred feet, the river winding between them, and three banks or benches rising from the water. He noticed the leaves of the buckeye, gum and sassafras beginning to turn.
The party camped about two and a half miles above Beaver, judging from the next day’s entry; Lewis does not describe the spot. Another riffle he passed that day, Waller’s, has not been located.
In the journal
the inhabitants who live near these riffles live much by the distresed situation of traveller
observed today the leaves of the buckeye, Gum, and sausafras begin to fade, or become red
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, September 2, 1803, in Milo M. Quaife, ed., The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1916), 33-34. (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 September 2, 1803. (opens in a new tab)
- Zadok Cramer, The Navigator, 7th ed. (Pittsburgh, 1811), 74-75. (opens in a new tab)
- Fortescue Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country (1810), in Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, vol. 4 (1904). (opens in a new tab)
Updated October 13, 2026
The journal entries written here
September 1803
Nights the Corps camped here
- Sep 1, 1803 mouth of Shouse Run, PA (Lewis’s party) Entries for Sep 1, 1803
NPS campsite reconstruction (Bergantino; Harlan where he is the only source). Source: National Park Service, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Park Atlas.
