Why White River State Park, Indianapolis, is the Gateway to the West, not St. Louis (1 of 3)
Because water was the only way they could get through the wilderness facing them, in 1803, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, they started on the only waterway that would take them to it. They started not in St. Louis, but 100 miles due south (not west) of Indianapolis (not settled until 1820), across from Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River.
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