Trailing Lewis and Clark.After 12 years of work at a spot on the Missouri River Missouri River River, central U.S. The longest tributary of the Mississippi River, it rises in the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana. It flows east to central North Dakota and south across South Dakota, forming sections of the South Dakota–Nebraska boundary, the near Great Falls Great Falls, city (1990 pop. 55,097), seat of Cascade co., N central Mont., second largest city in the state, at the confluence of the Missouri and Sun rivers and near the falls that give the city its name; inc. 1888. , Mont., archaeologists announced last week the discovery of a possible campsite used by 19th-century explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Although they made camp more than 600 times while seeking a Northwest passage Northwest Passage, water routes through the Arctic Archipelago, N Canada, and along the northern coast of Alaska between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Even though the explorers of the 16th cent. to the Pacific, no campsite has been found until now. Discoveries at the Great Falls campsite include three stone-ringed fire pits, an iron pushpin, a wooden tent stake, a gun flint, and many bison bones bearing the butchery marks of metal tools. The location and military-style arrangement of the encampment, as well as radiocarbon dating radiocarbon dating n. The determination of the approximate age of an ancient object, such as an archaeological specimen, by measuring the amount of carbon 14 it contains. Also called carbon dating, carbon-14 dating. of objects, are consistent with the explorers' written accounts, says project director Kenneth W. Karsmizki of Montana State University Montana State University, at Bozeman; land-grant; coeducational; chartered 1893. It is primarily a technical institution specializing in agriculture, engineering, and applied sciences. The Museum of the Rockies is there. in Bozeman. Lewis and Clark's records show that their 33-member team set up camp in the vicinity for 12 days in 1805. No other major expeditions that would have followed military procedures traveled so far up the Missouri River until 1832. |
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