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Perhaps no American felt a yearning to tame the West more powerfully than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had grown up in a social circle where the men had planned an expedition to the Pacific. Since he shared his father’s avid interest in cartography, it is not s ....

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.... from Congress in 1803 for a visionary project that was to become one of American history's greatest adventure stories. Jefferson wanted to know if Americans could journey overland to the Pacific Ocean following two rivers, the Missouri and the Columbia, which flow east and west from the Rocky Mountains. If the sources of the rivers were nearby, Jefferson reasoned that American traders would have a superior transportation route to help them compete with British fur companies pressing southward from Canada. On February 28, 1803, the Congress appropriated funds for a small U.S. Army unit to explore the Missouri and Columbia rivers and tell the western ....