Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2005
Abstract
Rivers of Change: Trailing the Waterways of Lewis and Clark is Tom Mullen's account of his five-month-long journey from St. Louis, Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria, Oregon. Mullen's book is large-part quirky travelogue, small-part history, and even smaller-part personal philosophy. Its bulk contains Mullen's observations while traveling along the banks of the Missouri River from St. Charles, Missouri, to Three Forks, Montana. As a matter of fact, approximately two hundred and fifty of the book's three hundred and eighteen pages are devoted to the Missouri River's past, present, and tentative future. The other rivers of Lewis and Clark, the Yellowstone, Columbia, and Snake, receive far less attention. Granted, Lewis and Clark spent more time along the Missouri than any other river in the Northwest. Mullen, however, spends no time along the Snake and provides only cursory coverage of the Yellowstone and Columbia. Consequently, Rivers of Change is less a book about the waterways of Lewis and Clark than about the Missouri River.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 25:4 (Fall 2005). Copyright © 2005 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.