Name That River

Long before railroads and highways, rivers were lifelines of travel and trade, and during the Lewis and Clark Expedition hundreds of rivers were named and described as the party mapped its way west. While camped about 10 miles south of here, Captain Lewis sent two men to investigate a rumored shortcut to the Missouri River, and on September 10th, 1805, he recorded that he had directed two hunters to go down the river to its junction with the Eastern fork and that this fork was named the Valley plain river. This is the first known written reference to the confluence of today's Clark Fork and Bitterroot Rivers in the Missoula Valley. Lewis and Clark first called today's Bitterroot River the Flathead River after their mistaken name for the local Salish Indians, but within a few days they renamed it Clark's River. The Eastern fork, or Valley plain river, later received at least eight more names, including Arrow Stone River, Hell Gate River, and Missoula River, and today it is called the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, with waters that travel over 1,300 miles from the Continental Divide in Montana to the Pacific Ocean. On February 6, 1812, British explorer, map-maker, and fur-trader David Thompson named this valley after the Indian word Nemissoolatako, from which Missoula can be seen to derive.

Missoula, Montana · United States