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These dudes were made of steel. Their tour of the US wasn't a vacation, more comparable to Astronauts than surveyors.

I live 15 minutes from the only marker that the expedition left. A carving in a small butte off the Yellowstone river that reads W Clark July 25 1806.

Don't worry I'm from Idaho and we prefer people not knowing where we are

I’ll admit, you had me scared. You talked conflict, and I thought Raid Shadow Legends finally paid you enough to become a sponsor for you.

“Undaunted Courage” is a great book about the expedition and it was hard to put down until I finished it Talk about rugged individualism!

When we moved from Maryland to Washington State in February it gave me a real sense of how beautiful things are with all our modern tech. It was probably amazing and terrifying to be on horse and carriage back when the frontier was so unknown. We did in 4 days what took them years. Mad respect for anyone back then for setting off into the unknown.

Now that you have discovered where Idaho is on the map, you might be interested to know that the original capital of the state was Lewiston which is just across the river from a town in Washington state called Clarkston. Any guesses where the names of these cities came from? :)

3:20 - Chapter 1 - Background 4:25 - Chapter 2 - The purpose 6:15 - Chapter 3 - Lewis & clark 7:15 - Chapter 4 - Preparations 10:05 - Chapter 5 - The expeditions begins 11:55 - Chapter 6 - Winter at fort mandan 13:45 - Chapter 7 - Onward 15:30 - Chapter 8 - Winter at fort clatsop 16:05 - Chapter 9 - The return 17:15 - Chapter 10 - After the expedition

Mapping their route - It is relatively easy to determine how far North and South they traveled by sighting Polaris. But they didn't know how far East and West they traveled until two years after the trip was over. That was determined by astronomers reviewing detailed sightings taken of Jupiter's 4 moons with their telescope. They also did medical examinations of the Indian tribes to try to determine what diseases they had before encountering Europeans. It was an amazing scientific journey with numerous discoveries.

I"m from St. Louis, lived there 30 years, often visited St. Charles as well. There are a lot of monuments and trail markers that show you where they traveled, it's amazing to stand at the same place they did so many years before and imagine what it was like seeing the great Mississippi and Missouri river confluence. It's beautiful if you've never been, you should go. It's an underappreciated landmark. A little way up the Missouri river you will find Hanibal, MO, the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain. A lot of history in that area.

Yes Simon..we all watched "Almost Heroes" dont forget to mention them and their efforts...

Might suggest then the Westward Expansion Memorial - The Saint Louis Arch, as another Mega Project.

The Lois & Clark TV series was a play on Lewis & Clark. One of the most amazing feats was their mapping along the way where they would estimate the distance of a landmark ahead of them. When all was said and done, their estimate was off by about 4 miles of the 4000 or so miles.

As someone who lives near where sergeant floyd was buried it’s always interesting to hear other people learning about the expedition.

i live 10 miles from where lewis and clark camped when they first saw the pacific ocean. the expedition is celebrated here in WA

I've always been amazed at how they travel for 2 1/2 years through uncharted territory and only had one fatality. The town of Sargent Bluff and Floyd county, both in Iowa, are named after him.

03:06 William Clark's most famous quote: "Why does that S.O.B. Lewis always get to go first?" 😅 😂 🤣

If it makes you feel better, I live 5 minutes from where Lewis and Clark started their expedition and I didn't even know too much about it other than the brief overview in school textbooks.

I’ve ridden (on my motorcycle) Hiway 12 over the Lolo Pass from Montana to Lewiston, Idaho and it is truly one of the most beautiful roads anywhere.

Megaproject: Simon Whistler learns where all 50 states are on a map.

I think the Internet deserves as Megaproject video. How it started and progressed over the years to how it is now maybe?

They carried some pretty amazing gear as well, including a .46 caliber Girardoni air rifle that could fire 30 rounds before recharging and could bring down a buffalo.

Well done! I learned more from this video than I did in my history classes in school. What I learned basically was, Lewis and Clark went West and saw the Pacific Ocean. As for Sacajawea, all I learned about her was that she was their guide.

Hey Canada! Help a fellow canadian broaden the worlds knowledge of Canada and it's people! The Rideau Canal and river system for mega/side projects and Francis Pegahmagabow for biographics! Peggy is the most skilled sniper of the Great War!

Great Job Everyone! I'm American. Came from that middle bit in the US. Knew about the Lewis and Clark thing, probably studied it in grade school, but every Exhibition of this Expedition would prompt me to nod off. I love ephemera! Transatlantic cable! Nicola Tesla! Japanese Balloon bombs! Lewis and Clark....zzzzz. But thank you finally for putting some blood in the story. Well done! One tiny note: Shoshone: sho-sho-knee

I had to smile the photo you have at 12 minute mark, when mentioning the Rocky Mountains, is of Moraine Lake in Alberta, Canada not along the path of the expedition.

The saddest part I ever learned was that after one of them died, the dog died of a broken heart. It sat on the grave of its owner and basiclly starved and dehydrated itself to death intentionally............we don't deserve dogs😢❤

The longest bridge in the world would be a good mega project. It connects New Orleans to the North shore, the lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

To use your favorite word Simon, Lewis ‘allegedly’ committed suicide. There’s a story there. Long story short, many people think he was murdered.

8:05 Hahaha! “Warmly welcomed” is the definition of “putting it lightly.” That dude was banging like a screen door in a hurricane. I’m surprised he had the endurance to keep up with the group. Lucky bastard.

I live in Lewis and Clark County, drink beer from Lewis and Clark Brewery, had bison jerky with lunch, fish at the Gates of the Mountains, and live in sight of the Sleeping Giant, I love it here!

I'm from St. Charles, Missouri, where the corps started their journey. My dad and I used to be in a reinactment group that had a full sized keel boat and cannon for the reinactments. The cannon was stored in our garage 😂

"Lewis & Clark, two names that sound odd w/o the other, like Lois & Clark..." 🤣 Simon, you crack me up...

You do an amazing job with presenting this videos, keep up the amazing great work!

Clark was a master of the dead reckoning method for determining location. They were only off by 40 miles over an 8000 mile journey. In the early 1800. Most people can't even get to a Costco without a voice activated GPS nowadays.

15:49 "Cold and damp" - Welcome to the Pacific Northwest temperate rain forest. Lewis and Clark complained about the weather a lot in their journals, IIRC.

Very well said, and True from your closing statements

The story of the expeditions first negotiations with the Shoshone involved the coincidence of one of the Shoshone present actually being Sacagawea's brother Cameahwait who she had not seen since being kidnapped by Hidatsas (where her French husband met her). This made the necessary acquisition of horses much easier.

I think you should make a video about the Suez canal to go with the current events.

AWESOME! I drove from Lewiston, Idaho to Missoula, Montana on US Highway 12 at the same time this video was uploaded! Even stopped at the Idaho- Montana Lewis and Clark Historical rest area. In a blizzard. That stretch is gorgeous! Of course, I am biased as I grew up on the Lewis and Clark Trail in the Clearwater River Valley.

Once again, outstanding!

Amazing video we went out to Oregon last month and saw the fort out there it was really cool u could still see the stream where they would get there water and where they would dock there canoes. It was awsome

I've always been a history nut and I was telling my girlfriend about this expedition when we took our first trip "Out West" last summer. As we stood looking at Mt. Rushmore, I said "Imagine what Lewis and Clark must have thought when they saw this." Her: "*long pause.....Huh?" Me: "Yeah, when they got home they went to ole Tom Jefferson and said, "Mr. President, you won't believe it, but there's a mountain out there with your face carved into it....along with George Washington....and two weird looking guys that we've never seen before...Its a helluva thing, sir!" This is how history nerds amuse themselves.

For those whom had seen me commenting here a lot, yes I had not been successful. But I'll add another mega project suggestion to the list Benban Solar Park, Aswan High Dam, Bar Lev Line and Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

I really hope you made this video so you can plug it in the upcoming one about the Gateway Arch and National Park in downtown St Louis. It’s literally the tallest monument in the United States made in honor of this very event! Please cover this topic, I’m sure you’ll be interested. :)

I recall a story I heard about a member of the expedition getting drunk and lost in the night. When he finally made his way back to camp he went on about this "nonsense" he found while intoxicated. How the ground bubbled, water shot into the sky and the smell of sulfer. He was dismissed as having a black out dream. It was later discovered to be part of Yellowstone. Not sure if it's true or not but it's a great little story.

What the hell? No Mention of Seaman!!? The most amazing dog ever!?

Every video is amazing

The Trail of Tears would be a good one to do here or on geographics.

Part of the "like before you watch" gang

Now you know where Idaho is!.. and even better, where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed. Gosh! Fun fact - The University of Idaho (in Moscow, ID, of all places) has been a pioneer of collegiate distant learning. Back in the day, they recorded courses and shipped VHS tapes to the students every week (with a slight processing delay time).

I'm sure Simon were in charge back then all the encounters would be perfectly peaceful. It's so easy to sit on the comfy soap box in the future and judge the past.

In 2005 my sisters volunteered to help with 'Lewis & Clark days' 200th anniversary at Pompeii's Pillar National Monument; which has the only known hard evidence of the expedition, with Clark carving his name into the pillar. The great-great-great (maybe more) grandson of Clark was in attendance and they got his autograph!

Good video 👍

I bought and read Stephen Ambrose's book (same guy wrote Band of Brothers) "Undaunted Courage" twenty years ago. I've been hoping that you'd cover this for ages. Admittedly I expected it to land on GeoGraphics. It's a fantastic story and worth reading.

I’m sure Montanans prefer most people not knowing where it is. It keeps the riff-raff out.

I live across the street from Clark's plantation, Locust Grove, in Louisville. Love this story.

Fun side fact: modern archeologists are able to pinpoint individual campsites used by the expedition! Due to their diets not containing much fiber, they were outfitted with "thunderclappers;" a stool softening pill that contained a huge amount of mercury. There was so much mercury being consumed and passed that their nightly latrine sites are easily detectable today.

Really enjoy your videos! Note graphics glitch @11:33

The crew that survived this journey incredible!

Cool video. Been in Oregon my whole life, right off the Old Barlow road. The original Oregon trail. Would have been pretty amazing to have seen it in those days.

Thank you

Great video! I would like to suggest to make a video about the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

In St Louis, under the Arch, is a museum where a large portion is dedicated to Lewis and Clark.

If your ever in Montana visit the Lewis and Clark caverns. Incredible cave, beautifully lit. One of the coolest places I've visited. Hidden gem forsure.

The stories of Sacagawea & York are adventures, too.

Another interesting point of historical trivia concerning the expedition that I'd hoped to hear more about; the rifles used! I've heard that they used a type of air rifle that had unexpected benefits, they were much quieter than the typical firearms of the time. Consequently while traveling through certain areas along their trip, they'd avoided the attention of some of the more war like tribes.

I live in Lewiston, Idaho. On the other side of the Snake River is Clarkston, Washington. Named after this expedition. Have statues and historical markers all over the area.

Maybe the silk road for a megaproject?

"Blanket Diplomacy with every tribe" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Read numerous books on this, enjoyed them all.Durham lad.

Lewis and Clark had their first big meeting with Plains indian tribes at a place in Nebraska called "Council Bluff". Both recognized the military value of the location. Later, it was the site of Fort Atkinson. The last military outpost the US built to fight the British.

Current reading The Journals of Lewis and Clark edited by Bernard DeVito. Thank you for adding so much to my reading adventure!

I'm sure you offended all 11 residents of Idaho 🤣 love the content

This would make an extraordinary film

The purchase was not "to the border of Canada". It was north to the headwaters of the Missouri (Mississippi?) River. That actually runs far into the interior of modern day Canada. Negotiations led to the modern border.

Love these videos> You should consider doing a video on the Goodyear Blimp Hanger, in Akron Ohio. The Goodyear Airdock is a construction and storage airship hangar in Akron, Ohio. At its completion in 1929, it was the largest building in the world without interior supports. I grew up in Akron, and it was always a fascinating sight to behold. Oh, and as a note, it is at least an urban legend around Akron that the Airdock is so big that it had it's own weather system inside - you could get a rain storm inside and clear skies outside. Not sure if that was actually true, but made for interesting stories. ;)

hi simon!

Great, thanks. The L&C journals are really worth reading. BTW, little correction: Blackfoot people, not pluralized into Blackfeet.

Saying 95% of the possible population of 20 million Native Americans died after Europeans arrived in the Americas is a very misleading thing to say in this video. First, that 20 million number is a very high estimate of the population of Native Americans. The ranges of the population on Native Americans in both North and South America range from 2-7 million in most estimates with some estimates going up as high as 18 million but those being based off less genuine statistical information. The second major issue is that population is the population of both North and South America combined. The territory that made up the US and later Canada was by far the least populated land Native Americans lived in (because it was cold). Of the total population of Native Americans from North and South America less then 5% of their total population lived North of Mexico. And then for the important bit, the deaths of the Native Americans. Almost all Native Americans were not killed directly by Europeans or later Americans. The over whelming majority of them died from diseases brought to the Americas that the Natives had no immunity for. The same thing could have happened in the opposite direction if Native Americans had fought off diseases that people from the Old World had never encountered before. But because the Old World was much more populated and people lived much closer together it led to the people of the Old World encountering much more diseases then Native Americans did. And then of the remaining small population of Native Americans living in the US after we have made clear the population of the Natives in the US was already small and the majority overwhelmingly died of diseases we come to what happened to the rest off them. Of those remaining they either continued to live in the US, were moved to another location within the US or were killed in a small war/raid fight. Because when you actually go back and look at the fights between the US government and civilians against Native Americans you will find that those conflicts can hardly be called wars in most cases. In most cases the conflict involves a raid by the Native Americans on some US settlement and then a counter attack by the people who were attacked. In fact, if you look at the conflicts between Native Americans and the US government and civilians you will find that almost every single conflict begins with the Natives resorting to violence first. So I always find it annoying when people think the Native Americans were treated any different then people around the world were. The Natives already had slavery and war before Europeans arrived and were much more prone to violence then the Europeans who were arriving in the Americas in almost every tribes case. The wars between the Native Americans taking territory from each other and making the loser their slaves as well as torturing the losers of the war are very horrific when talked about in detail. Many of the Native American tribes resorted to this level of warfare, slave taking and torturing against the Europeans who arrived in the Americas as well but they soon found out they were not of equal strength when it came to warfare. Thus losing the lands they had taken from each other for hundreds of years already.

Hey Simon, I'd love to see a video on Simon's Bucket List.

Doing this trip in a year. Spring of 2022.

The movie Almost Heros is actually the real story of the first explorers to reach the Pacific Ocean. Elegantly portrayed by Chris Farley and Chandler Bing . Now you know, and knowings half the battle.

I actually live in a valley they passed through on their expedition which has a river named after Clark. I also went to a school and a set of caverns named after them. It really doesnt get more patriotic then that.

All we really got for the purchase was New Orleans and St. Loius. The rest was just lines on a map. This expedition was like exploring Mars today.

The saddest part of this story was the Mandan. They were immediate and constant allies of the US. The Mandan village had a population of 15,000. It was one of the largest cities in North America at the time. The Lakota had recently invaded from Minnesota and had driven out the Cheyenne and were putting pressure on the Mandan, and all were under the thumb of the Blackfeet, so all but the Lakota and the Blackfeet welcomed the alliance with the strong new nation. When smallpox hit the Mandan it all but destroyed them. They couldn't flee their city because they were at war with the Lakota and Hidatsa. When their plague had ended, there were just a few and they were taken in by the Hidatsa. My third grade teacher, Sister Mary Alice's grandmother was one of the last full blooded Mandan Indians. Oh, the stories I heard from my favorite teacher ever.

don't feel bad, many Americans would have a hard time finding Idaho, sadly

90% of the American Indian population was wiped out from Smallpox in the 1500s. What remained were mainly smaller nomadic tribes, but the city-states that traded with the Aztecs were gone. By the time the U.S. came to be, the vast American Indian population had essentially been gone for centuries.

my wife and i drove the L&C trail summer of 1992. well worth the trip

There are many museums and parks along their route. Of particular note are the replicas of the long boats the men built. Incredible feats of engineering.

You should check out William's older, but lesser known brother, George Rogers Clark. He was mainly the reason the original Northwest Territory was established. Therefore, opening the way for western expansion and the possibility of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The expedition traveled the entire route giving everything they laid eyes on an English name and Latin taxonomy without ever once asking the native peoples they encountered if they had a name for whatever it was they found. It was later learned that, yes, the natives had already named everything from the highest peaks to the tiniest wildflowers, because that's what people do, they name everything in their environment. The group was also dumbfounded by the number of horses the Nez Perce nation had under their control. Great herds of them.

Love Simon mentioning Idaho

Wow, that ending left plenty to be desired..... specifically because of how crazy the story gets surrounding the "suicide" you mentioned briefly.

Great job pronouncing Louisville! It is a great source of contention if you are from our area.

York was NEVER freed by Clark, though it was his request as his reward.

At first I was angered by Simon's lack of knowledge of US geography, especially from doing so many of these "educational" shows, but then I realized that while I know England isn't just beautiful metropolitan London and the gorgeous Sherwood Forrest/One Hundred Acre Wood countryside, I can't tell you where Manchester, Brighton, Liverpool or Stratford (well, maybe Stratford-it's near Avon) is on a map. Touche.

Mega Project idea: The "Mining and Chemical Combine" in Zheleznogorsk, Russia. A Plutonium production plant. The entire facility was built 200 meters into the mountain, and contains 3 Nuclear Reactors (Basically the same design as РБМК, like in Chernobyl),1 АД and 2 АДЭ (АДЭ-2 provided power and heating to the workers city, Zheleznogorsk). The facility has its own railway and electric locomotive. Now the Plutonium production is stopped (since 95'), and the reactors were shut down. Now they produce MOX fuel for fast liquid metal Reactors (for now, БН-800).

My great uncle Antoine Le Claire was actually an interpretor for William Clark and knew many of the indigenous tribes languages