1806

March 23, 1806 they give the fort to the Clatsop tribe and head back upstream on the Columbia River.  In May they arrive back with the Nez Percé but they have to wait until late June for the snows to melt in the bitterroots before they can make the crossing.  They arrive back at travelers rest on July 3, 1806 and split up as described in a previous posting.

They are using horses now more than canoes for faster travels but they have much trouble with either the Indian horses wanting to escape back to their homeland or being stolen by other tribes.  The Nez Percé guide leading back across was more familiar with the mountains than had been old Toby and knew of a shorter crossing with less problems than before.  Once back on the Missouri they built more dugout canoes to take advantage of the swift current for faster traveling.

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Several years later in mid 1890s a man named Jacob V. Bower searched for what he called the true source of the Missouri River.  By tracing all tributaries he searched for the point that a drop of rainfall or a spring from the ground would travel the greatest distance to empty into the Mississippi at St. Louis.  He had previously searched for the source of the Mississippi, finding it at Lake Itasca in Minnesota.  Jo and I have been there and stepped across the mighty Mississippi on a log foot bridge.

He found that by following the Jefferson River, Beaverhead River, and Red Rock River he arrived at Mount Jefferson on the continental divide near the Idaho/Montana border just a little west of West Yellowstone, MT.  There he discovered a spring he named Bower's spring and declared it to be the true source of the waters of the Missouri River.

At three forks the RMM on the Missouri is 2341 or that many miles from St. Louis.  The distance from there to Bower's spring is 298 additional stream miles for a total of 2639 miles.