Fort Clatsop Suggested Historic Area Report

G. Relationship to areas already in National Park System

Geographically, Fort Clatsop is not conveniently associated with any area presently administered by the National Park Service. The nearest such area is Fort Vancouver National Monument, Washing ton, about 110 miles southeast of Astoria by rather circuitous high way routes. Mount Rainier National Park is about 170 miles northeast of Fort Clatsop by highway, and Olympic National Park (headquarters) is about 255 miles north.

Historically, however, Fort Clatsop has rather close links with at least two areas of the National Park System: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, in St. Louis, Missouri; and Meriwether Lewis National Monument, near Hoherwald, Tennessee. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial commemorate the westward growth of the United States, in which the Lewis and Clark Expedition was such an important and dramatic episode. The memorial is located on ground on which, or near which, Lewis and Clark were welcomed back to civilization, and there the explorers spent later years of public service. In the exhibits presently planned for the museum there, Lewis and Clark will be treated rather extensively in one major exhibit unit related to the Louisiana Purchase. The Meriwether Lewis National Monument commemorates the location on the Natchez Trace where Lewis died and is buried.

Other areas in the National Park System are less directly connected with the Lewis and Clark Expedition but share with Fort Clatsop an association with the same general historical theme--the American settlement and occupation of the Pacific Northwest . Among the areas having some degree of association with this theme are Scotts Bluff National Monument, Fort Laramie National Monument, Whitman National Monument, and Fort Vancouver National Monument.