Lewis & Clark in McCracken County
Paducah, McCracken County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Lewis and Clark in Kentucky- McCracken County. Lewis and Clark, with the nucleus of the Corps of Discovery, stayed in present McCracken Co. in Nov. 1803 while traveling down the Ohio River on their journey to the Pacific. Clark returned in 1827 to establish Paducah. Over. (Reverse) Nov. 11-13, 1803, Lewis and Clark stopped at Ft. Massac, Ill., near present-day Paducah and recruited men, including Indian interpreter George Drouillard. On Nov. 13, they camped in area of Metropolis Lake State Nature Preserve.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
In November 1803, as Lewis and Clark led the nucleus of the Corps of Discovery down the Ohio River toward their rendezvous with the West, they passed through what is now McCracken County. Camping near present-day Paducah and stopping at Fort Massac just across the river in Illinois, they recruited men for the journey, including the skilled interpreter George Drouillard. Years later, in 1827, William Clark returned to establish the town of Paducah itself.
Why it matters
The stop shows the Ohio River as the great artery of the young nation's westward movement, and it ties the founding of a Kentucky river city directly to the most famous expedition in American history.
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Related people
- · Meriwether Lewis
- · William Clark
- · George Drouillard
Related events
- · Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806)
- · Founding of Paducah (1827)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Paducah's Indian Name
Paducah, KY
Paducah is the only major Kentucky city bearing an Indigenous name, honoring the legendary Chief Paduke. His people, a group associated with the Chickasaw, lived and hunted in this area until their land was ceded in the 1818 Jackson Purchase. When General William Clark—of Lewis and Clark fame—platted the town in 1827, he set aside its earlier name, Pekin, in favor of Paducah.
Jackson Purchase
McCracken County, KY
In 1818, the young United States acquired an 8,500-square-mile wedge of land between the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers from the Chickasaw Nation for $300,000, in a treaty brokered by General Andrew Jackson and Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby. Known ever after as the Jackson Purchase, the tract opened westernmost Kentucky and Tennessee to American settlement. Its clean river boundaries still define the region's eight Kentucky and twenty Tennessee counties.
Paducah, Kentucky
McCracken County, KY
Where the Tennessee River meets the Ohio, William Clark—of Lewis and Clark fame—laid out the town of Paducah in 1827, giving it a name tied to the Chickasaw and their remembered chief Paduke. The rivers and, later, the railroads made it a busy trade center and the seat of McCracken County. It sent Alben Barkley to the vice presidency, produced humorist Irvin S. Cobb, and was seized early in the Civil War by Union generals Lew Wallace and William T. Sherman.
Mantle Rock
Livingston County, KY
During the brutal winter of 1838-1839, Cherokee people forced from their Smoky Mountain homelands toward Oklahoma sheltered beneath Mantle Rock, a 40-foot sandstone arch, while the ice-choked Ohio River halted ferry crossings. Many died there waiting to cross. Long before that tragedy, the arch had also sheltered ancient Indigenous people who camped at the site.