Northwest Passage

By editor

Missoula, Missoula County, Montana

For about three hundred years, the most valuable piece of real estate in North America was a river that did not exist.

They called it the Northwest Passage. The theory was simple, elegant, and entirely wrong: somewhere out there in the blank spaces of the map, there had to be a convenient, navigable water route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was a geographical necessity. Without it, how was a civilized nation supposed to get its trade goods to China without sailing all the way around the bottom of South America?

By 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was still holding out hope. When he sent Captain Meriwether Lewis west, his instructions were explicit. The object of the mission was to explore the Missouri River and determine "the most practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce."

It took Lewis three years, four thousand miles, and a considerable amount of shoe leather to finally deliver the bad news.

The moment of truth arrived on July 4, 1806. Lewis was on his way back east, riding through the Missoula Valley. He had just spent the better part of a year dragging canoes up the Missouri, abandoning them to buy horses, nearly freezing to death in the Bitterroots, building new canoes on the Clearwater, and then doing the whole miserable process in reverse.

As he rode along the Clark Fork River, he finally put the three-hundred-year-old myth out of its misery. He concluded that the most practical route between the Missouri River and the Columbia River was by land, following hundreds of miles of Indian trails over terrain that was entirely unsuited for commerce, navigation, or anything else besides a mountain goat.

It was a disappointing conclusion for a man who had been sent to find a river, but it had the distinct advantage of being true.

Fifty-three years later, the government tried again. In 1859, Lieutenant John Mullan was ordered to build a military road connecting the two great river systems. Mullan looked at Lewis and Clark's suggested route, declared it unfeasible, and surveyed his own.

Mullan's road was a marvel of modern engineering. It was much more practical than the Lewis and Clark route. It was also 624 miles long, required hacking through virgin timber, and took a wagon train two solid months to cross.

Today, you can stand in Caras Park in downtown Missoula, right on the edge of the Clark Fork River, and look at the water. It is a beautiful river, but it does not go to the Missouri, and it does not go to China. It just goes where it wants to go, which is exactly what it was doing when Lewis rode past it in 1806, carrying the news that the map of the world was going to have to be redrawn.

See also

• A Shortcut, detailing the indigenous trail network that Lewis followed through this valley
• Name That River, the story of how the Clark Fork got its name
• Danger Ahead!, the story of the Nez Perce guides who warned Lewis about the Blackfeet