Life at Camp Dubois: The Lewis and Clark Expedition's First Winter

"Captain Clark & his men building a line of Huts," from the 1810 edition of Patrick Gass's journal. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

William Clark and Meriwether Lewis spent the winter of 1803–1804 making final preparations for their expedition, recruiting more than two dozen more men. Clark stayed at Camp Dubois on Wood River to train them, while Lewis traveled the region gathering information about the Upper Missouri.

Building and supplying

• Shelter first: the first cold weeks went to clearing land and building huts.
• Gear: then the men readied the boats, tools and provisions.
• Food: hunting parties brought back turkeys, deer and other game. The men smoked, jerked and dried meat for the trip — jerky kept far longer than fresh meat.
• Laundry: a local woman offered to wash their clothes for a fee, and they built a laundry for her.
• Discipline: sometimes the men drank too much.

Skills and drills

• Special tasks: Clark gave recruits with valuable skills — blacksmithing, carpentry — special jobs: repairing guns and tools, making the boats water-ready, and tapping trees for syrup to make sugar. They earned an extra whiskey ration and were excused from guard duty.
• A military expedition: Clark held frequent firearms drills and marksmanship training, and the men practiced handling the keelboat and two pirogues they would take upriver.

Visitors

Indigenous, French and American river travelers often stopped to trade goods and news. On Christmas Day 1803, visitors from a nearby Indigenous village came to celebrate with the American, French and Métis men wintering at the camp.

Sources

Based on "Life at Camp Dubois," part of Pivotal Places: Stories from the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The 1810 engraving is in the public domain.