Lewis in Marietta, Ohio

Approximately 100 river miles downstream from Wheeling, Virginia (West Virginia), Meriwether Lewis and his men arrived at Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent U.S. settlement of the new Northwest Territory. Founded in 1788, the town became a base for U.S. expansion north of the Ohio River. Fort Harmar, established in 1785, gave the town its start, but was abandoned by 1790.

Here, on September 13, 1803, Lewis would have found a nice community of several hundred citizens. Thomas Rodney, the territory land adjudicator who lived in Wheeling, described Marietta as, “…at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio and chiefly on the east side of Muskingum. There appears to be several good brick buildings in the town and near it and several very cleaver frame buildings…The streets run parrellel one way with the Ohio and the other way with the Muskingum, crossing at right angles.”

Lewis noted in his journal that he released two members of his crew in Marietta – Wilkinson and Montgomery. But he also hired a new member during the stop, but didn’t mention his name. In the evening, he wrote the Mr. Jefferson and was visited by Colo. Green, the postmaster of the town.

Between Wheeling and Marietta, Lewis only had to hire oxen to drag his keelboat through the riffles on two occasions. Along the way to Marietta he also observed large flocks of pigeons and scurries of squirrels swimming across the Ohio.

A large marker stands in Marietta marking the short time that Captain Lewis and his men spent in the area.