A step back in time
Weekend visitors at Viking Lake State Park had the opportunity to experience life as it might have been a couple centuries ago. Those that missed it can catch it this week, too.
The Department of Natural Resources arranged to let visitors board a near-replica of Lewis and Clark’s primary boat and go ashore to learn from a mountain man with beads and pelts.
Boat-builders Butch and Catherine Bouvier and buck skinner John “Lizard” Wilcox were able and eager to offer insight to curious listeners of all ages.
The Bouviers point out Lewis and Clark’s journals don’t exactly describe the boats that navigated the waters of the newly purchased Louisiana Territory from 1804-1806.
During the expedition, Lewis and Clark wrote about the terrain and drew or kept for examination new plants and animals President Thomas Jefferson might want to learn about, but information about their boats wasn’t as detailed.
While both the expedition and Bouviers’ boat weighed 12-tons, the Bouviers’ boat carrying guests from shore to shore on Viking Lake over the weekend was a flat bottom barge three feet longer and four feet wider than Lewis and Clark’s “big” boat that traveled waters as far west as the Pacific. The expedition’s boats sometimes tipped too much and the Bouviers prefer to give their guests a less treacherous ride. Historians debate on whether the expedition’s boats’ bottoms were flat or round, but Butch is pretty sure his replicas are accurate because of their stability in water.
Butch has been building “expedition” boats since 1985 when park rangers around Onawa wanted to host a Lewis and Clark Festival. He was approached to make a model of one of the expedition’s boats. After 300 hours of research and labor, he had a model for display and dubbed it “Discovery.”
But the idea of creating an actual replica was fermenting in the minds of even the visitors. Several signed up to voluntarily help build one if he’d oversee the construction. The rest, as they should say, brought history to our fingertips and eye gates.
In 2004, after being told a $15,000 grant would be awarded if he could get a boat to a bi-centennial Lewis and Clark celebration, Bouvier and others created their “90-day wonder” to accommodate guests.
Butch has crafted seven large craft and several smaller ones. Visitors can tour both the barge and its onboard museum as well as enjoy a free ride.
Butch is considered an expert for designing craft used for IMAX and Ken Burns’ films about Lewis and Clark. His boats are real, however, and have been extensively photographed to create the illusion that viewers are watching the “real” boats in the movies. Instead, the movie’s versions are not river-worthy. They’re made of Styrofoam.
Bouviers answered questions as visitors sailed smoothly in as little as 14 inches of water.
The expedition had up to slightly more than 50 present at one time during the 1804-1806 exploration. The navigation crews to operate the barge and the two smaller pirogues, required fewer men. Bouviers believe most members took their turns at hunting food, scouting and cooking or tending to other duties an expedition requires. All men probably helped “lift” the massive boats after getting bogged down on a sandbar.
At the Lewis and Clark State Park near Onawa and at Viking Lake State Park this past weekend, buck skinner Wilcox set up his collection of authentic and replicas of items used and traded by those earlier masters of commerce as the United States’ populations worked their ways west.
Wilcox has been adding to his collection for about 20 years. Displaying bison or beaver hats ringed with bear claws, antelope teeth, and beads and standing near hides of animals that roamed the mountains and plains of yesteryear, Wilcox demonstrated how to start a fire and talks about guns and other artifacts around his campsite. Visitors asked questions and handled the two official beads Lewis and Clark used to make trades with Indians and fur trappers as they ventured west. Wilcox explained how hides were tanned and how chewing gave it the desired softness.
Area schools have registered for the exhibits this week and over 700 students are expected to step back in time to learn from the Bouviers and Wilcox contribute to their “hands on” education.
The exhibits will remain at the park through next weekend, courtesy of the Department of Natural Resources.
Visitors might want to be ready to plug their ears, though, because Catherine said Butch really enjoys setting off the canon any time he can. He does clear the deck, though, before he lights it. The boom not only sounds through the park, it sends strong vibrations throughout the boat as well.
Viking Lake State Park is located about three miles west of Stanton, and about a mile south of Hwy. 34.