Humanities scholar and historian Clay S. Jenkinson will be giving a talk on Thomas Jefferson and Lewis and Clark at the Exploratory Center in Charlottesville, his first stop at a Lewis and Clark interpretive center as he travels across the country, following their trail. Tickets are by donation as part of a fundraiser for the Lewis & Clark Exploratory Center. Please support our educational and environmental programs at LCEC!
Jenkinson is one of the country's premier Lewis and Clark scholars. He has three books on the 1804-06 expedition, including a study of The Character of Meriwether Lewis, which breaks new ground on the life, achievement, and tragic death of Jefferson's protege Lewis.
Following the lecture we'll be having light refreshments and a chance for guests to talk with Clay.
Jenkinson will be trailing his 23-foot Listening to America Airstream as he begins a 20,000-mile transcontinental journey following the Lewis and Clark expedition along the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Snake, and Columbia Rivers to Astoria, Oregon, where the expedition wintered between November 1805 and late March 1806.
"I've been studying Lewis and Clark all of my life. This journey gives me a chance to follow the journey at a slow and careful pace. My hope is that my 2025 travels will give me fresh insights into what the greatest Lewis and Clark scholar James Ronda called 'America's first great road story.'"
Jenkinson is the author of thirteen books; a frequent talking head in Ken Burns' documentaries, most recently The Buffalo. He is also one of the principal talking heads in Doris Kearns Goodwin's forthcoming History Channel series on the America West, hosted by Kevin Costner.
Previously, Jenkinson has floated sections of the Missouri; flown in a small airplane over most of the trail west of North Dakota; traveled the journey from St. Louis to Astoria by car; canoed (19 times) the famous White Cliffs section of the Missouri southeast of Fort Benton, Montana; and hiked the entire course of the Little Missouri River twice.
Jenkinson, who established his reputation as a historical impersonator of Jefferson and Lewis, is working on a new book about the "dynamics of the journals" of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
He is the editor of the Lewis and Clark quarterly journal, We Proceeded On.
According to Dennis McKenna, the senior editor and producer at Listening to America, "Clay is following the Lewis and Clark Trail, but his larger concern is with the state of the American republic as we approach our 250th birthday next year. He's trying to get the pulse of the American experiment at this bewildering and critical time in our national history."
Jenkinson was educated at Vanderbilt University, the University of Minnesota, and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Why launch the 2025 journey in Virginia? The minute I determined to make this journey I knew it had to begin with Jefferson, whose brainchild the expedition was. The national Lewis and Clark Trail begins at Pittsburgh, where the boats were made, but I hope someday the trail will be extended to Monticello and Poplar Forest. Jefferson was the Founding Father with the greatest interest in the future of the American republic in the West."
Jenkinson will be posting short videos, photos and photo essays, daily dispatches, and more at ListeningtoAmerica.org (LTAmerica.org), where those who wish to follow his journeys can sign up for his weekly newsletter.
