Traveling from Washington DC, Harpers Ferry and Pittsburgh

On 7 July 1919, One-hundred and six years after Lewis left Washington D.C., another cross-continent expedition would depart from the White House. The U.S. Army Motor Transportation’s First Transcontinental Motor Train started a two (2) month long journey from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. Launched with a noteworthy ceremony, including the unveiling of a Zero Mile Marker, at the south end of the White House Ellipse near Constitution Avenue. Like Meriwether Lewis and his experience with low water on the Ohio River, the Motor Train would soon discover and record the deplorable conditions or lack of highways in the United States. 

Parallels in the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the U.S. Army Transcontinental Motor Train are numerous. While Meriwether Lewis departed the White House without ceremony, both expeditions were planned, equipped, and staffed with the best of intentions to assure success, including the future World War II Supreme Allied Commander and President of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower. Volunteers in the travel industry, business leaders in the fledgling motor transportation industry and community promoters worked tirelessly to get the Motor Train across the U.S., including the crossing of the Missouri River at Council Bluffs and Omaha.⁽¹⁾

Did anyone in the Motor Train give thought to the fact that they were crossing the trail of the first U.S. Army Transcontinental exploration, led by Lewis and Clark, when they crossed the Missouri River? An even greater question, why is there no Zero Mile Marker commemorating the start of the Lewis and Clark Expedition?