Meriwether Lewis - Legacy

Legacy

For many years, Lewis' legacy was overlooked, inaccurately assessed, and somewhat tarnished by his alleged suicide. Yet his contributions to science, the exploration of the Western U.S., and the lore of great world explorers, are considered incalculable.

Four years after Lewis' death, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction, ... honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him.

Jefferson wrote that Lewis had a "luminous and discriminating intellect." William Clark's first son Meriwether Lewis Clark was named after Lewis; the senior Meriwether Clark passed the name on to his son, Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr.

The alpine plant Lewisia (family Portulacaceae), popular in rock gardens, is named after Lewis, as is Lewis' Woodpecker. A subspecies of cutthroat trout, the westslope cutthroat (Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi), is also named after him. Geographic names that honor him include Lewis County, Idaho, Lewis County, Kentucky; Lewis County, Tennessee; Lewisburg, Tennessee; Lewiston, Idaho; Lewis County, Washington; the U.S. Army fort Fort Lewis, Washington, the home of the US Army 1st Corps (I Corps), and especially Lewis and Clark County, Montana, the home of the capital city, Helena; Lewis and Clark Pass (Montana); Lewistown, Montana; the Lewis Range of Montana's Glacier National Park; Lewis Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona; Lewis Avenue in Billings, Montana. A day use campground at Gates of the Mountains Wilderness, north of Helena, Meriwether Picnic site. A cave, Lewis and Clark Caverns between Three Forks and Whitehall, Montana. Two US Navy Vessels have been named in honor of Lewis: the Polaris nuclear submarine USS Lewis and Clark and the supply ship USNS Lewis and Clark were named for him and William Clark.