On August 31, 1803, Meriwether Lewis left Pittsburgh in a new boat with eleven hands and began the descent of the Ohio that opened the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The river was very low. In ten days, by hand, horse and ox, the party covered about ninety river miles to Wheeling. This article follows those days place by place, from Lewis’s own journal as Milo Quaife printed it in 1916 and from his letters, and it marks what the record leaves open.
Six weeks at Pittsburgh
Meriwether Lewis reached Pittsburgh on July 15, 1803, and found the Ohio low. The boat he had ordered was not ready. Its builder had promised it for July 20 and missed the date; Lewis called on him every day and wrote to Jefferson that he would go on even if he could make only a mile a day. On July 22 a letter from Jefferson reached him with the news that the treaty ceding Louisiana had arrived in Washington.
The boat was finished at seven in the morning on August 31, and Lewis left Pittsburgh that day, at ten by his letter to Jefferson of September 8. His journal entry for the day is dated August 30 and says eleven o’clock; it is probably misdated, since there is no entry for August 31. The party numbered eleven hands: seven soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial. Who the three young men were is not certain, and where the boat was built has never been established. Lewis wrote that he left with “a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial”. See Pittsburgh and the Forks of the Ohio.
August 31: Brunot Island and McKees Rocks
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. In Lewis’s words, “the ball passed through the hat of a woman about 40 yards distant cuting her temple”.
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. See Brunot Island.
September 1: Neville Island and Woollery’s Trap
September 1 began in fog so thick that the pilot advised waiting, and the boat did not move until eight. While they waited Lewis wrote out his explanation: the fog came from river water warmer than the air above it, an idea he went on to test with a thermometer over the next few days. Then the crew worked down along the island now called Neville Island, Irwin’s Island in Cramer’s river guide of 1802.
At the little Horsetail riffle all hands labored in the water for two hours. At the big Horsetail they unloaded the goods and lifted the empty boat over. About five in the afternoon they reached Woollery’s Trap, which the boat could not pass even unloaded, so Lewis hired a man with a team of oxen and got off. They put in for the night, apparently just below, having made only ten miles. At the trap, Lewis wrote, “I therefore employed a man with a team of oxen with the assistance of which we at length got off”.
Lewis names no modern place here. Cramer’s later editions put the Horsetail ripple about halfway down the island and Woolery’s ripple, or trap, a little below its foot, where the channel crossed toward Middletown, today’s Coraopolis. Those descriptions place the trap near the foot of the island only to within about half a mile, and who Woolery was is not known. The 1821 edition calls the island Monture’s, the earliest use of that name found so far. Montour Run, which reaches the back channel opposite the island’s lower end, and the Montour Trail share the name; the trail’s Mile 0.0 trailhead near Coraopolis is about half a mile from the back channel and 1.3 miles from the foot of the island. The Montour Trail is not part of the national historic trail. See Neville Island and Woollery’s Trap.
September 2: Logstown
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 people there, he wrote, “the inhabitants who live near these riffles live much by the distresed situation of traveller”.
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. See Logstown.
September 3: Beaver and Fort McIntosh
Fog held the boat until nine. While it lifted, a fur trader, Guy Bryan (Lewis writes Gui Briant), came up with two boats of furs and told him that if he could get over the bar at Georgetown, twenty-four miles on, he could keep going. Lewis called it some consolation. They passed Atkins’s riffle with ease and the mouth of Big Beaver Creek, today’s Beaver River.
Two and a half miles from camp they came to anchor off “Mackintosh,” the site of Fort McIntosh at present Beaver, and Lewis discharged one of his hands. About three miles on they stuck on what he thought the worst riffle yet and had to unload and drag the boat over with horses. They stayed the night about three miles below Beaver, having made only six miles. See Fort McIntosh, Beaver.
September 4: Georgetown and the state line
The river fell an inch overnight. About an hour after starting, the men in the pirogue, which had carried part of the load since Pittsburgh to lighten the boat, called for help: she had sprung a leak and nearly filled, soaking hardware meant as presents for Indian nations. Three miles on the boat stuck fast on a bar below Georgetown, and people from the neighborhood helped get it over.
At Georgetown Lewis bought a canoe with two paddles and two poles for eleven dollars, then found it leaked too much to use without repairs. About two miles before camp the party passed the line dividing Pennsylvania from Virginia on the east bank and from Ohio on the west. Lewis could see it as a strip of timber felled about sixty feet wide, meeting the river at the mouth of Mill Creek. They camped on the east shore, in what is now Hancock County, West Virginia, having made about thirteen miles. Lewis had the wet goods dried, oiled and repacked in oilcloth, set men to repairing the canoes, and hired another hand as far as Wheeling. The water was low and clear enough to see sturgeon, bass, catfish and pike. The National Park Service lists Georgetown, which is private, as a high potential historic site. See Georgetown.
September 5: Brown’s Island
Fog again. The party loaded both canoes, set out at eight and passed several riffles without having to hire horses or oxen, sixteen miles in all. Rain began at six in the evening and fell on and off through the night. They put in at the head of Brown’s Island, opposite present Weirton in Hancock County, West Virginia. It grew very dark before the canoes carrying the most valuable stores had come up, so Lewis had the trumpet sounded; they answered and arrived a few minutes later. He left the stores aboard under oilcloth and had the leaking canoes bailed through the night. See Brown’s Island.
September 6: Steubenville
Fog held the boat until half past seven. In two and a half miles the crew met four riffles and dragged the boat over three of them with horses, for which the owner charged two dollars. Under sail they passed Steubenville at two in the afternoon, six miles below the night’s camp. Lewis wrote that the town “is [a] small well built thriving place has several respectable families residing in it, five years since it was a wilderness”.
Lewis described the town as small, well built and thriving, with several respectable families, where five years earlier there had been wilderness. It had been laid out in 1797 or 1798 on the site of Fort Steuben, a federal blockhouse of the late 1780s that was gone years before Lewis passed. He does not mention the fort, and he does not say that he landed. Two miles below the town a squall on a riffle broke the sprit of the mainsail, and with his men worn out Lewis again sent out for horses or oxen. The oxen drew badly but got the boat over two more riffles, and the party camped on the west bank about four miles below the town, having made ten miles. See Steubenville.
September 7 to 9: Charlestown and Wheeling
Setting out at half past seven on September 7, the party passed Charlestown, now Wellsburg, three miles below camp: a handsome little village of about forty houses with a wooden bridge over Buffalo Creek. They reached Wheeling, sixteen miles on, at five in the evening. Lewis counted about fifty houses at the county town of Ohio County, Virginia, with an old stockade fort decaying at the mouth of Wheeling Creek, and noted that travelers caught by low water embarked here because the river below was deeper.
Here Lewis collected goods he had sent ahead by land with a merchant named Caldwell and met Thomas Rodney, bound for the Mississippi Territory as a judge and land commissioner. On September 8 he rested his men, bought a pirogue and hired a man to work her, dined with Rodney’s party, and wrote to Jefferson that on many bars the deepest water did not exceed six inches. Rodney wrote to Jefferson on September 12 that Lewis had unloaded and had his boat drawn by oxen over the riffles above Wheeling.
Dr. William Patterson asked to join the expedition, and Lewis agreed if he could be ready by three the next afternoon. He was not, and Lewis left at three on September 9 without him, camping six miles below, about three miles below present Bellaire, Ohio. The bread baked for the men in Wheeling had been left behind, and Lewis sent a corporal and two men back for it through a night of cold, heavy rain. The National Park Service lists Wheeling Wharf, today’s Heritage Port, as a high potential historic site. See Wheeling.
Where the trail begins
Since May 11, 2019, the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail has officially begun on the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. Section 2502 of Public Law 116-9, signed March 12, 2019, amended the National Trails System Act so that the trail runs about 4,900 miles “from the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon.” The change followed a National Park Service study. Its significance statement found the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Louisville, Louisville to the Mississippi, and the Mississippi to Wood River nationally significant, and found the overland preparation routes from Washington, including Harpers Ferry to Pittsburgh, not nationally significant. Those overland routes, and Eastern Legacy sites east of Pittsburgh such as Harpers Ferry, are not part of the designated trail. The stretch described here is the trail’s first.
What the record leaves open
- The departure date. Lewis’s journal entry is dated August 30 and says eleven o’clock; his letter of September 8 says the boat was finished at seven on August 31 and that he left at ten. There is no entry for August 31, and the entry is probably misdated. The National Park Service uses August 31.
- Who was aboard. Lewis gives only numbers. Whether George Shannon and John Colter were among the three young men on trial is not settled.
- Where the boat was built. The builder and the yard have never been established.
- Woollery’s Trap and the channel. The trap is placed from river guides of 1802 to 1821, not a survey, and only to within about half a mile. Lewis does not say which side of Neville Island the boat took.
- The island’s name. Cramer called it Irwin’s Island through 1811, Irwin’s (now Neville’s) in 1814 and 1817, and Monture’s (now Neville’s) in 1821. No document of 1803 using the Montour name has been found.
- Distances. Lewis’s mileages run long: he put Wheeling 100 river miles from Pittsburgh, against about 90 today. The camps given here are approximate.
- Logstown and Waller’s riffle. Early guides disagree about which bank Logstown stood on, and Waller’s riffle has not been located.
- Seaman. Lewis first mentions his dog on September 11, below Wheeling, and later wrote that he had paid twenty dollars for him. Where he bought the dog is not documented.
Sources and method
Lewis’s words are quoted from his 1803 journal as printed in Quaife (1916), which is in the public domain, and each quotation matches that text letter for letter, with Lewis’s spelling. Each day’s full entry is on this site: August 30, September 1, September 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Gary Moulton’s edition was used to check readings and is cited for its editor’s notes, which are summarized, not quoted. Letters are from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 41. Places are located from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System and OpenStreetMap; points marked approximate are estimated from the 1803 text and the river guides.
- Meriwether Lewis, journal, August 30 to September 11, 1803, in Milo M. Quaife, ed., The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1916), 31-43.
- Lewis to Jefferson, Pittsburgh, July 15 and July 22, 1803, and Wheeling, September 8, 1803; Thomas Rodney to Jefferson, Wheeling, September 12, 1803. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 41 (Princeton University Press, 2014), via Founders Online.
- Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, vol. 2 (University of Nebraska Press), editor’s notes, August 30 to September 9, 1803.
- Zadok Cramer, The Ohio and Mississippi Navigator (1802) and The Navigator (1808, 1811, 1814, 1821).
- Fortescue Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country (1810), in Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, vol. 4 (1904).
- Public Law 116-9, section 2502 (signed March 12, 2019; in effect May 11, 2019), amending 16 U.S.C. 1244(a)(6).
- National Park Service, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Extension Study, Significance Statement (2016).
- John S. Salmon, Lewis and Clark Eastern Legacy Study (National Park Service, 2007).
- National Park Service, Pittsburgh to the Pacific: High Potential Historic Sites of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (2022).
