I have had a couple of goals for this circumnavigation of the US. One is seeing places I have heard of and never got around to and the other is revisiting places not seen in a long time. Pompey’s Pillar has been on my radar since internet access taught me to search the dusty corners of history biography and geography during many long hours of waiting to hear the 911 phone ring. I have finally fulfilled this goal though we barely got there in time.
Sacagawea’s son whom she had with a fur trader she married, was apparently nicknamed Pompey and Captain William Clark decided to name this pile of rocks for the toddler. The 400 foot tall sandstone column on the south shore of the Yellowstone River has become a National Monument thanks to Clark cutting his name in the stone as the only graffito left by the Corps of Discovery on its two year exploration of the American west.
In the modern era Clark’s graffito is suspended high in the air as the soft sandstone has crumbled away from where he stood so the parks service has built a steep complicated wooden structure to allow us to see what he saw and stand where he stood 216 years ago.
Dogs aren’t allowed up here so Layne walked Rusty on the expansive lawns down below and I got to spend the 45 minutes before closing time checking the visitor’s center…
…watching a movie and finally buying Ambrose’s account of the expedition as I had been looking for a book to get me up to speed on the full story.
Too often History is reduced to an account of war and political intrigue and the horrors humans are capable of inflicting on each other. Lewis and Clark defied the odds, shared leadership duties and traveled for two years exploring a possible water route across the new Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean. No lives were lost, no Indians were massacred and much was discovered. I’d like to think I’d have been brave enough to join them but I wonder.
To think Clark walked here got my over active brain thinking. Naturally despite the late hour, perhaps because of it, I was not alone and had to share this monumental moment with loud children and visitors glued to their phones. But it was worth it.
Lewis and Clark split up briefly on their return journey with Lewis going north and Clark coming south along the Yellowstone. He saw this pillar and observed some drawings already carved in the soft rock so he added his own. Nowadays doing what he did is vandalism of the worst sort, but he gets a free pass for creating this magical spot.
Lewis explored the Marias River to the north and left no note of his passing. So this is where we focus our attention. They met up August 12th 1806 a good deal further ahead of their original planned meeting spot at the mouth of the Yellowstone noted in passing on the way out the year previous. They were good planners accompanied by good luck. I hope these youngsters learn to understand the nuances of the past.
What a time that was to be on a path of discovery. I know that what followed was hardly edifying but to have been the outliers measuring the country’s newly acquired wilderness
must have been astonishing.
We can just tag along and be glad we get to see a little of what they saw. And a Promaster van on I-94 isn’t a terrible way to travel even if it is nowhere near as heroic as those early explorers.
The National Parks Service always does a bang up job of recording the history of these places:
From I-94 exit 23:
Spot the gopher in the lush grounds of the monument:
We were tired from a long days drive and for me some serious stair climbing! What turned into a pause for a picnic became dinner, Montana cheese of black rye bread from a Helena bakery followed by an unmanly dinner of delicious quiche also from Sunflower Bakery in Helena.
Then we turned in for the night on a whim and in the middle of that Saturday night when I awoke to write this I could hear traffic in the Interstate occasionally but in the silence the night filled with the rustling of cicadas, the sounds of my youth in Italy, and I’d like to think the sounds heard by Captain William Clark camped nearby two hundred years ago.
