A  BlueGrass Historian Interview  with Jim Mallory  .  .  .
Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Celebrations Can Include Historic Connections to Lexington and the Bluegrass

NOTE:  Originally published in May of 2002 in the BlueGrass Historian, Vol. II, No. II, this article is and interview of James L. Mallory by the editor of the Historian, Ed Houlihan.  Both were later named members of the Kentucky Lewis & Clark Bicentennial commission – Mallory by Governor. Paul Patton in 2003 and Houlihan by Governor Ernie Fletcher in 2005.

On October 25, 2003 in Louisville and Clarksville, a “send-off” will recreate the departure of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the nucleus of the Corps of Discovery on the epic journey that took them to the Pacific Ocean. This early major event in the bicentennial celebration of Lewis & Clark’s expedition will turn the world’s eyes toward Kentucky and it role in the epic that brought the men back to Louisville in 1806 as national heroes.
The BlueGrass Historian recently interviewed James L. Mallory (right), president of the Ohio River Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, as a part of the Lexington History Museum’s study of local ties to the event.

Historian:  With the growing interest in the coming bicentennial of the Corps of Discovery, it must have been a big event in its day for interest to have grown so?

JLM:  It was huge!  I compare the 1806 news that the Corps had returned, after not being heard from in 18 months, to the return of our astronauts from the moon.  Everybody in the nation wanted to see them, touch them or throw a party for them -- by today’s standards they were celebrities beyond our wildest imagination.

Historian:  Isn’t the expedition a western event . . .  the discovery of the unknown territory from the mouth of Missouri River  to the Pacific?

JLM:  True, many, and especially our western friends, think only of the 1804 to 1806 part of the journey.  But in fact the story begins a decade earlier when President Thomas Jefferson first asked Kentucky’s General George Rogers Clark, the older brother of William, to seek an all-important route to the West.  General Clark was not in good health at the time and unable to undertake such a rigorous venture.  That was the first of many Kentuckians’ ties to this great America  adventure.