Lewis and Clark Expedition Monument

The Lewis and Clark monument at the west end of the Downtown Mall commemorates the Virginia connection to the 1804–06 expedition. Meriwether Lewis was a Virginia-born officer who grew up near Charlottesville; William Clark was born in Caroline County. Jefferson, who commissioned the expedition as president, chose Lewis precisely because of his Virginia background and his familiarity with the kind of frontier self-sufficiency the mission required. The expedition was in many ways the extension of the Revolutionary generation's vision of westward expansion — the manifest destiny of the republic the Revolution had created. The monument site, at the edge of the historic downtown, anchors the connection between Charlottesville's Revolutionary past and its post-Revolutionary future.