The trip down the Ohio was a practice run for the rest of the trip. Just below Wheeling, he stopped at an Indian earth mound ( Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville) and described it in great detail in his journal. As he set out from Wheeling, Lewis found the Ohio broader and deeper and lined on both banks with hardwoods. William Patterson, the owner of the largest collection of medicines west of the mountains. When he finally arrived at Wheeling, Captain Lewis described it as ‘‘a pretty considerable Village of fifty houses.’’ The party rested for two days during which time Lewis met Dr. The hundred miles from Pittsburgh to Wheeling were extremely difficult because of low water and an abundance of driftwood on the Ohio River. It took Lewis and Clark a little more than two years to reach the Pacific. The supplies were transported overland to Pittsburgh, where the party set out down the Ohio River on September 1, 1803. government’s arsenal at Harpers Ferry, where he acquired weapons and other supplies manufactured there. Captain Lewis then chose William Clark, a fellow frontier officer, to join him. Jefferson chose Meriwether Lewis, an experienced army officer and frontiersman, to head the expedition. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to appropriate funds for an exploration of the part of the continent bordering on the Missouri and Columbia rivers.

Lewis & clark stephen e ambrose