The Lewis and Clark Expedition camped below these bluffs and just downstream from here on June 6, 1804, across from Big Manitou Island, which no longer exists. The river had risen a foot overnight, and the crews of the two pirogues struggled against a strong current while the keelboat passed left of the island and then crossed to this side of the river. Its 20 oarsmen had gone so far ahead that they stopped two hours early to let the pirogues catch up. Earlier that day, the party passed the mouth of Petite Saline Creek on the river's west side, where William Clark noted brackish water and French boatmen spoke of many salt springs, including a very large one later called Big Lick near Gooch's Mill. On the morning of June 7, the party reached what are now Torbett Spring and Lewis and Clark Cave, and Sgt. Charles Floyd recorded passing springs coming out of the cliff. No one in the party mentioned the Indian pictographs above the spring, although expedition journals did record pictographs at other Missouri River bluff locations nearby, so the Torbett Spring images may have been painted after the expedition passed. The Stephen Long Expedition first noted those pictographs in 1819, Prince Maximilian of Wied described them in 1833, and an 1882 history of Boone County recorded figures, circles, dots, crosses, and other forms; Sauk and Fox Indians, possible artists of the pictographs, lived in the area until around 1814.