Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West

With careful research and meticulous re-creations, National Geographic Films brings the amazing story of adventure and the exploration of the unmapped West to the giant screen in Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West, narrated by Academy Award-nominated actor Jeff Bridges.

The film - partially filmed in South Dakota - chronicles a group of explorers - the Corps of Discovery - led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark - into uncharted territory to find a water passageway to the Pacific Ocean and describe for science the wonders of the West.

The expedition encountered an endless series of physical challenges as they traveled through raging rivers, buffalo-filled prairies and rugged mountains on their 8,000-mile journey to the Pacific Ocean and back. The film details the generosity of Native Americans in helping the explorers, including the story of Sacagawea, a teen-aged, Native American girl who accompanied the group and whose contributions were invaluable to the success of the expedition.

Producers spent more than two weeks in South Dakota filming sequences for the movie, splitting their time between the Yankton/Running Water area in the southeast, and Mobridge in the north.

Shots of the immense buffalo herd seen in the film were taken on a private ranch near Mobridge. In 1803, Lewis and Clark were struck with amazement at the sheer size of the buffalo herds they encountered on the great plains, which numbered 10,000 or more.

Herds of this size clearly don't exist today, and the producers searched all over the United States for the largest herds they could find. Their search was complicated by the fact that many ranchers tag their buffalos' ears; on our giant CineDome screen, the tags could be several feet tall. Fortunately, producers found a herd of a few thousand tag-less head near Mobridge, which they filmed with the assistance of the owner - who herded them along with his tractor. The sequence was then enhanced through computer graphics, who added thousands more buffalo into the background of the shot. The end result mirrors the great herds as Lewis must have seen them a hundred years ago.

On Swan Creek in Mobridge film makers shot the encounter with the Teton Sioux. The Teton were the most powerful tribe on the lower Missouri, and Lewis and Clark weren't quite sure what to expect when they arrived. The scene depicted in the movie occurred on the third day the Corps of Discovery spent with the
Teton; things were not going well and there was a struggle with the boats.

This was a difficult scene to write because Lewis and Clark's account of what happened isn't necessarily in accordance with the Teton's oral history regarding the incident. Producers worked closely with the Lakota at Standing Rock tribes to put the scene together in such a way that the events rang true with both versions of history.

Lewis & Clark is presented by Eddie Bauer Inc. in association with the Suzanne and Walter Scott Foundation, and endorsed by the National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.