On May 14,1804, starting point for the Lewis and Clark "Corps of Discovery" that comprised 33 people began near what is now known as Wood River, Illinois. The trail today stems from Illinois, cutting through Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

At trail's end for the expedition was the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, now called Les Shirley Park. A homeward journey brought the explorers to St. Louis, Missouri on September 23, 1806. Their roundtrip had chalked up about 8,000 miles (12,870 kilometers). The exploit made possible the great pioneer movement that settled the West in the mid-1800s.

In 1978, the U.S. Congress established the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. The National Park Service administers the trail in partnership with federal, state and local agencies.

Philp of NLCEC said a range of data is sought about the trail today. The effort itself has already been underway for nearly three years.

"We are building a data base of multiple layers that allows people, first of all, to cut across the country and through multiple ecosystems, carry out a current assessment. We're building it at different scales, continental, regional, and local. The cool thing about all of this is that it's going to live on the Internet," Philp said.

Geographical Information System (GIS) information, the precision offered by the Global Positioning System (GPS) network of navigation satellites, coupled with Earth remote sensing data adds up to a unique, interdisciplinary classroom experience. No need for noses just to be buried deep into textbooks, Philp said.

One of the beauties of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Philp said, is that the team of travelers kept detailed journals. Every day of the expedition -- over two years, four months, and ten days -- was recorded.

Gary Moulton, a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has edited a multi-volume set of the Lewis and Clark diaries. Furthermore, mapping guru, Bob Bergantino, a hydrogeology expert at the University of Montana's Montana Tech in Butte, spent three decades studying and pinpointing the exact route taken and the encampments the expedition members staged.

"You get a sense of what it was like historically. We know temperatures, rainfall, the flora and fauna, wildlife, geology, the ethnology and languages. If we didn’t have those journals it would be much more difficult to compare and contrast the then and now," Philp said. "Our work is education related and focused on looking at our past, finding out where we are today, and what does it mean for the future," he said.

Some aspects of the trail remain pristine. Others slices of the trail have fallen victim to urban sprawl.

"You can literally go back and look at ecosystems that resemble in form and function the historical scene that Lewis and Clark would have encountered," Philp said. On the other hand, it's not too difficult to spot radical change as evidenced by downtown Portland, Kansas City, Omaha, and St. Louis, he said.

A challenge is sorting out the patterns that Lewis and Clark encountered; how the natives modified the environment; and identifying successive ways the settlers and various resource extraction activities took a toll on ecosystems, Philp said.

Carrying out a cultural and ecological assessment of the trail and its significance to us today is matched with a bicentennial salute of Lewis and Clark set for 2003-2006.

On January 18, 2003, a kick-off event is scheduled to take place at Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop home in Charlottesville, Virginia. The event will mark the 200^th anniversary of Jefferson's request to Congress for monies to support the expedition.

The Earth Observing System Education Project, itself, appears to be on good footing, funding wise.

Republican Senator from Montana, Conrad Burns, is a driving force on the project, securing needed monies to sustain and grow the effort.

"The EOS project at the University of Montana is second to none and provides a great example of how technology can be used to educate students on such historic events as the upcoming Lewis and Clark Bicentennial," he said.

But then there's the 22^nd century.

"We want to create a legacy for the tricentennial," Philp said.