Due to a special ceremony taking place in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center on Wednesday, December 10, the Capitol Visitor Center will be closed to public tours all day. There will be no public tours of the Capitol on that day.
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson proposed and Congress funded the first of several nineteenth-century expeditions to the American West. The “Corps of Discovery,” led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, was commissioned to chart the Louisiana Territory, find a water route to the Pacific Ocean, and establish trade with American Indians. Traveling the Missouri and Columbia Rivers and partially overland to the Pacific, the explorers gathered extensive information about the Northwest’s geography, geology, flora, fauna, and inhabitants. Their findings were published in a two-volume report to Congress in 1814.