Quick Facts
Location:
120 S 3rd St, Steubenville, OH 43952
Significance:
Meriwether Lewis stopped in Steubenville in 1803 on his westward journey.
Designation:
Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail
MANAGED BY:
Historic Fort Steuben
Amenities
10 listed
Benches/Seating, Entrance Passes for Sale, Gifts/Souvenirs/Books, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Information, Junior Ranger Booklet Available, Parking - Auto, Restroom, Trash/Litter Receptacles, Water - Drinking/Potable
Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums
Visitor Centers and Museums along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail
“Stewbenville a small town situated on the Ohio in the state of Ohio about six miles above Charlestown in Virginia and 24 above Wheeling-is small well built thriving place has several respectable families residing in it, five years since it was a wilderness"-Meriwether Lewis, September 6, 1803
On this date, Meriwether Lewis and his small crew arrived at the American town of Steubenville.
There had been an American fort at the site, Fort Steuben, built in 1787. It was named after Baron Von Steuben, the Prussian military leader who helped American troops during the American Revolutionary War.31 Von Steuben wrote Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, which was the U.S. military’s conduct manual at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The fort burned down in 1790, and by 1797, settlers formed a small village near the site of the fort. In 1803, Ohio was admitted to the union as a new state.
“Five years since wilderness." Lewis meant that it had been five years since White American settlers started coming here. Black families, who were enslaved by the White families, were often forced to join them. Many Shawnee, Delaware, Haudenosaunee, and Cherokee people lived in the multicultural Ohio River Valley, as did folks of French, Spanish, and African descent. It was a place of commerce, a bustling highway full of traders and travelers. If a wilderness was a place with no humans, this was far from that.
For Lewis and others of his background in that era, “wilderness" meant any place without European-style settlements.
Steubenville was one link in the chain of America’s westward expansion.
Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail
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* lewis & clark national historic trail
* lewis and clark
* lewis and clark expedition
* lewis and clark national historic trail
* ohio river
* ohio
* georeferenced interpretive content
* forts
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
