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The Lewis and Clark Expedition

In 2004, the nation celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean. The mints struck nickels in 2004 and 2005 with special reverse designs honoring the memory of the intrepid group that actually reached the Pacific and then returned.

The rationale for the expedition being honored on the reverse of the nickel is that President Thomas Jefferson was in office at the time. Was Jefferson, however, the prime mover or merely the catalyst that set the explorers into motion?

While the expedition did not get completely under way until May 1804, Thomas Jefferson in fact had made previous attempts to explore this part of America. As early as 1784, he had met with the American world traveler, John Ledyard, and persuaded him to visit the area around the mouth of the Columbia River. Ledyard actually left on this trip but decided to go through Russia; he was, however, arrested in February 1788 at Irkutsk in eastern Siberia because the government of Empress Catherine the Great had suddenly decided that he was seeing too much. He was deported to Poland and told not to return, on pain of death.

In 1792,

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