Archaeologists Get Rare Chance to Excavate Fort Clatsop, Site of Lewis & Clark Encampment
WARRENTON, Ore. Nov 26, 2005 — A fire that destroyed the replica of Fort Clatsop, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark spent the winter of 1805-1806, has provided a rare chance for archaeologists to probe the ground where the fort stood, seeking even the subtlest evidence of the explorers or the Clatsop Indians who came before them.
The Oct. 3 blaze was ruled accidental, having started from a fire on an open hearth in one of the barracks.
Archaeologists set aside nearly all of November to excavate the site before construction of the new replica begins Dec. 10, 200 years to the day from when construction of the original fort began. They hope to prepare a report on their findings and open the replica to visitors by next summer.
Scientists from the National Park Service used remote sensing devices such as a magnetometer and ground-penetrating radar to seek soil irregularities that might signal a post hole, or a fire pit or anything else manmade. They dug about a foot to the "plow zone" farmed beginning in the 1850s then down about another foot to the sediments that were intact before that and probably contemporary with the explorers' Corps of Discovery.
Where some previous searches used backhoes a method that makes today's scientists cringe this effort used trowels and paint brushes, taking things a centimeter or less at a time.
The few artifacts found ceramic bits, a piece of a child's ceramic doll can be traced to later pioneers or to Indian tribes.
Newer research has exposed a clearer picture of what the original winter encampment looked like, so it can be rebuilt with greater accuracy.
Probes of the area since the 1940s have turned up glass trading beads, musket balls and other artifacts that date to about the time of the explorers. But those items also were used by fur traders who arrived by ship years before Lewis and Clark did, and none has provable ties to the men.
As more was learned, changes were made to the replica to make it more authentic. A fireplace was added in 1963 and gun ports were filled in a year later because they were not historically accurate.
Those who rebuild the replica will have access to some of the lesser-known journals kept by enlisted members of the Corps of Discovery who did the actual building and described the fort in better detail than Lewis and Clark did.
The only surviving illustration of how it may have looked was one drawn by Clark before the fort was built. "There is nothing written that says they followed that sketch," said Chip Jenkins, superintendent of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.
The original fort probably was pretty rustic.
"It was raining, their tents had rotted, they probably were sleeping in the open or under a rotting elk hide," Jenkins said.
"They just felled the trees and threw it up," he said, and didn't care if it lasted. The logs probably were not peeled, making them highly vulnerable to insects and rot.
Not everyone thinks the excavation was centered where it should be.
Archaeologist Kenneth Karsmizki, who heads the Columbia Gorge discovery Center in The Dalles and has excavated at Fort Clatsop and other Lewis and Clark campsites, said journal entries of expedition members vary substantially about the site of the fort, and the area probed could be off by a mile or much more.
He said the exactness of the celestial observations made by Clark that gave the fort's location can be questioned and homesteader reports of presumed ruins of the fort vary widely in location.
But the archaeologists on site said the best available information had them at or near the right place, and there is an oral continuity of knowing where the site was: from Indians, from the fur traders who arrived soon after the explorers left and later, homesteaders and their descendants.
Area Indians apparently helped themselves to parts of the fort after the expedition party left in March of 1806, and the acidic soil and rain forest of the Oregon coast would have quickly rotted away the remainder, so nobody was expecting to find large chunks.
Jenkins said even if the fort location can't be established, this was still a rare chance to probe a rich area.
"We're looking for straight edges or right angles" that indicate a soil disturbance might be manmade, said Douglas Wilson, the head National Park Service archaeologist on the project. "And we are finding some of those."
