Lewis and Clark

Clark named this river for Lewis. Beginning August 21 he and the Shoshone guide the men called Toby went about fifty miles down it from here, the last stretch on foot when the horses could go no farther, and on the 23rd he turned back. His Lewis's River did not last. Miners who could not get boats back up it in the 1860s called it the River of No Return, and that name stuck. Had the expedition somehow run it, the water route would have saved only about fifty miles over the land route Toby led them.

What the plaque says

Lewis and Clark Hoping for an easy river trip to the Pacific. Clark explored the first few miles of the rugged canyon of the Salmon below here late in August 1805. His small advance party camped near here with poor but friendly Indians. Clark reported that the Salmon "is almost one continued rapid," and that passage "with Canoes is entirely impossible," so the expedition had to buy packhorses and go 110 miles north to an Indian trail across the mountains. Quotations from the Original Journals of Lewis and Clark. 122 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural and Educational Center — 18 mi
  In the valley where she was born, a center that spells her name the way many of her people say it.

More markers nearby

• Nez Perce Trail — 5.5 mi
• Gibbonsville — 10 mi
• Fort Bonneville — 12 mi
• Historic Lemhi Co. — 12 mi