Just one year after Napoleon sold the Louisianna Territory to the United States, a military expedition led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark set out to explore the land previously uncharted by Europeans.
The trip lasted two years, four months, and ten days, and many in the newly forming United States had thought the men died on their journey.
Keep watching to learn more fascinating facts about the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
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Jefferson thought they might encounter woolly mammoths.
Thomas Jefferson was pretty obsessed with mammoths.
He may have been interested in discovering that it was actually the American mastodon – the mammoth's northern cousin – that he enjoyed waxing lyrical about, but, at the time, they were internationally recognized as mammoths.
He collected fossils and asked his friends to mail him any mammoth teeth they came across, and he was absolutely convinced that these huge furry elephants still roamed North America.
His fascination had started when a seven-foot mammoth tusk, along with a huge jawbone, was found.
Jefferson saw these massive beasts as a symbol of the strength of his newly emerging nation.
