College hosts seminar along historic trail

College hosts seminar along historic trail

Alumni and friends of Lewis & Clark joined President Michael Mooney in July on a weeklong seminar, “The Challenge of Leadership: Lewis and Clark in the American Wilderness,” through Idaho’s magnificent Selway Bitterroot Wilderness.

“Business leaders from the Northwest would trot along [on horseback] the same narrow, rugged mountain trail taken by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805 on their way to the Pacific Ocean and again in 1806 on their return to St. Louis,” wrote a reporter in the Aug. 1 issue of The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal also put the nation on notice that the College “expects to play a major role in the upcoming bicentennial of the 1804-1806 expedition.”

Seminar leaders were Stephen Dow Beckham, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr., Professor of History, and Clay Jenkinson, the nation’s foremost historical interpreter of Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson.

The seminar began with a series of lectures on campus. Joyce Hunsaker presented a historical interpretation of Sacagawea; Stephen Tufte, assistant professor of physics, discussed navigational techniques available in 1804-1806; President Mooney talked about the American Enlightenment; and book collector Roger Wendlick described the College’s collection of printed materials on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.