Digital Repository

From 1997 to 2002, Brent Phelps made a photographic survey of the trans-Mississippi West that Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their Corps of Discovery explored from 1804 to 1806 while on a commission from President Thomas Jefferson. Using GPS technology, Phelps precisely identified locations visited by the expedition, and photographing during the same seasons, he endeavored to capture each location in weather conditions similar to those documented by the explorers. When Phelps photographed near the Fort Mandan area, he had difficulty operating his camera in the subzero temperatures similar to those experienced by the corps two hundred years earlier.