A Whale of a Tale
Posted by: 
Volcanoguy
N 45° 54.189 W 123° 57.653
10T E 425467 N 5083735
Two adjacent signs about Lewis and Clark at small Cannon Beach city park on Ecola Creek.
Waymark Code: WM13EF
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 01/02/2007
Views: 20
Two history signs at small Cannon Beach city park on Ecola Creek. One is about whale on beach that Lewis and Clark visited, the second is a general Lewis and Clark info sign.
Marker #1 Name: A Whale of a Tale
Marker #1 Text: President Jefferson ordered the Corps of Discovery to describe this land and its resources - especially the fauna, flora, and native peoples. When word reached Fort Clatsop in January 1806, that a whale had grounded south of Tillamook Head, Lewis and Clark outfitted a party to investigate. “Found only the Skelleton of this monster on the Sand,” lamented Clark. “The Whale was already pillaged of every valuable part by the Kil a mox Ind[ian]s.”
The explorers measured the whale’s skeleton and reported a creature of 105 feet. At Ecola Creek they watched the Tillamook Indians boiling blubber by dropping heated stones into a wooden trough and then storing the oil in bladders. “The Kil a mox although they possessed large quantities of this blubber and oil,” remarked Clark, “were so prenurious that they disposed of it with great reluctiance and in Small quantities only . . . .”
Marker #2 Name: The Lewis and Clark Expedition
Marker #2 Text: In 1804-06, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led about 40 soldiers and boatmen on an epic journey. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned this “Corps of Discovery” to find a route to the Pacific Ocean through the newly acquired Louisiana territory. Along the way, they mapped the land, recorded its resources, and contacted its native inhabitants.
The landscape has changed since Lewis and Clark explored it: rivers have been dammed, forests cut over, prairies plowed under, and roads built to the horizon. Although remnants of wilderness still exist, imagine this land as Lewis and Clark first saw it two centuries ago. Sign includes a map of route of Lewis and Clark.
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