Portaging the Great Falls

Compass Rose at entrance to Center

Center sites atop bluff of Missouri River

One of the reasons we came to Great Falls is to visit the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center located on the banks of the Missouri River in Great Falls.  We went there yesterday and we were not disappointed at all.  Talk about the state-of-the-art complex!  Pretty neat how you are introduced at the beginning of the entrance with a huge compass rose made out of marble, depicting where you are and what point they Corp of Discovery traveled.  The first thing I thought of - Oh! Vermilion, Ohio - and where we lived - at Compass Rose.

Once you enter into the heart of the complex you are drawn down into the lower level, equal with the Missouri, and you travel along the path where it explains from the beginning with Thomas Jefferson developing the plan to financing and outfitting the Corp to the selection of men, to the start in St. Joseph, Missouri.  They actually started in Cincinnati but picked up more supplies and men as they neared St. Louis.  One side of the path or displays depicted the Indian version of what was going on and their perspective and the other side was Lewis and Clark's travels.  Even to the point where they were going to cross the Continental Divide in Lo Lo, Montana (just west of Missoula), they built the display as if you were climbing a mountain - going uphill on an incline.  Then when you came down the other side depicting Oregon, you were also stepping down.  Quite impressive and ingenious.

The Great Falls as Lewis and Clark experienced it was 5 different falls - the first one and most impressive is way downstream and we are going to that today on our way to Fort Benton National Historical Park.  They thought that this was the one and only falls that the Indians told them about and then discovered they had 4 more to transverse.  Today Colter Falls is underwater because dams have been built just upstream of each of the other four and Colter Falls was just a 'baby' and US thought it was expendable.  Oh well.  It took 1 month for the Corp to go through all the falls, they brought their boats out of the water and pulled them on wheels passed the last falls - Black Eagle - which is right near downtown Great Falls.  I was impressed with the Center, did not learn anything new except the talk we sat through regarding the maps Lewis and Clark had and what the theories were as to how the western US looked like in 1804.  Very informative.

Rainbow Falls/Dam and a tidge of Crooked Falls

And that puts us to Great Falls and our stay here.  As I said before, very noisy, lots of people and for the first time we are not in view of mountains!  Since a year ago last August.  Maybe that's the problem? I am looking for campgrounds to move to in Livingston, Montana - just west of Bozeman, for a one night layover, then move to the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park - still in Montana.  Hopefully move Monday instead of Tuesday as planned.