September 10, 1998
The hunt for Fort Clatsop goes on: Archaeologists trying to pinpoint site of Lewis and Clark’s winter camp
NOTICE TO EDITORS: A team of archaeologists from the National Park Service, the Museum of the Rockies and the University of Washington will show how they are trying the find the precise location of Lewis and Clark’s winter camp and what they learned so far at a media briefing at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22, at Fort Clatsop National Memorial near Astoria, Ore. The memorial is about five miles southwest of Astoria off U.S. 101. From Highway 101 turn east onto Business 101, then follow the signs to Fort Clatsop.
A more than half-century-old hunt for the exact site of Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery wintered near the Oregon coast in 1805-06, is being renewed this month by archaeologists from the National Park Service, the Museum of the Rockies and the University of Washington. Ken Karsmizki, associate curator of historical archaeology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., will be excavating at the replica of Fort Clatsop that was built in 1955, looking for evidence of the long-rotted away original structure that was abandoned when Lewis and Clark returned east. The National Park Service also will be continuing an extensive mapping project of the entire Fort Clatsop National Memorial site.
One novel effort to locate the fort headed by Julie Stein, a UW and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture archaeologist, is looking for privies used by the expedition by searching for mercury in the soil. Mercury was prescribed by Lewis and Clark as a treatment for syphilis. If privies with high mercury levels are found, researchers can be sure that those facilities were used by the Corps of Discovery, not local Indians who occupied the area or later white settlers. Stein also will be looking for a garbage dump, where the expedition tossed vast amounts of elk bones, left over from their primary food source. Army regulations specified where garbage dumps and privies were to be located in relationship to the fort, so if either is found, researchers would have a major clue to the exact location of the original wooden structure.
Participating in the Sept. 22 media briefing will be Cindy Orlando, superintendent of the national monument; Jim Thomson, NPS regional archaeologist; Karsmizki and Stein.
At least four earlier exploratory excavations in 1948, 1956, l957 and l961 did not uncover remains of the original fort. Digs in 1996 and 1997 set the stage for this year’s work and yielded some historical artifacts but also did not locate the fort.
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For more information, contact:
Orlando at Fort Clatsop National Memorial at (503) 861-2471, extension 221, or cindy_orlando@nps.gov
Stein at the UW at (206) 685-2282 or jkstein@u.washington.edu
