The Wettest Winter of the Expedition
They reached the Pacific in November 1805, worn out and soaked. A few weeks later the Corps of Discovery picked a stand of trees a few miles inland, built a small log fort, and named it for the Clatsop people who lived nearby and traded with them all winter.
Then it rained. It rained on nearly every day they were there. Their elk-skin clothes rotted, fleas got into the bedding, and the meat spoiled faster than the hunters could bring it in. On the gray days the captains wrote in their journals and Clark drew maps of the country they had crossed.
A few men camped on the beach to the south and boiled seawater day and night to make salt for the trip home. When word came that a whale had washed up on the shore, Sacagawea asked to go and see it. She had come this far, she said, and wasn't going to miss the great fish.
On March 23, 1806, they handed the fort to the Clatsop chief Coboway, left a list of their names behind, and turned east for home.
