In December of 1803, Meriwether Lewis set up camp on the River Dubois in Illinois with many of the men who would later make up the Corps of Discovery.

During their stay at Camp River Dubois, the Corps trained to survive the conditions of the wilderness, hired more men for the journey and gathered supplies. Without the months of preparation at the camp, their campaign would not have been a success. The men’s stories during their time at River Dubois are preserved through the care of the volunteers and manager at Camp River Dubois Lewis and Clark Museum.

Museum Manager Brad Winn works to preserve the stories of the Corps. Winn said his goal is to educate people about what really happened at Camp River Dubois and to rebuke the idea that Lewis and the Corps of Discovery left from St. Louis to begin the campaign.

In one of the museum’s rooms, visitors will find a log cabin, barrels of fake food, beads and cloth. Large audio-visual exhibits talk about the history of the camp as well as display letters that the men wrote in their diaries. Winn said this exhibit provides information about the methods Lewis and Clark used to pick the men they wanted on the journey with them.

“If you had to be, in this case, William Clark, what kind of person would you bring with you on the trip?” Winn said. “They were learning to work together, building a team. They lived in log cabins while they were here. They built a fort.”

A darkly lit room across the hall displays an array of maps on the walls. The first shows what was known about the landscape of America before the men took their journey. A large chunk of the country is missing in the map, which shows the men’s limited knowledge about the land they were about to explore.

“They tried to figure out what to expect,” Winn said. “How do you prepare for a trip where you have no idea where you are going, you have no idea how long it is going to take you and when you get there you are not even sure what to expect?”

Winn said that despite their preparation, the men did not know what to expect from the land they were preparing to cross. During the exploration, Lewis and Clark were able to produce maps that accurately described the areas they explored.

More than 100,000 visitors come to the museum each year to interact with the exhibits and to gain another perspective of the pilgrimage.

“This center was our destination,” Trisha William said. “Because of our jobs, we couldn’t take a real vacation, but this visitor’s center is perfect because it’s pretty close to us and we are big history buffs.”

Visitors walk around the life-size keel boat and enter the interactive movie theater. Just outside the theater sits volunteer and avid Lewis and Clark historian Weever Glenn. He spends his Saturday afternoons sitting in his chair volunteering at the center and making sure children do not climb on the exhibits. He said he has traveled the trail of Lewis and Clark with his family and even visited the same spot near the Pacific Ocean where the Corps of Discovery ended their exploration.

“I grew up in this area, and I would just like to be associated with the center,” Glenn said. “I just like the history of all of it.”

Outside the museum is a replica of the fort in which the Corps lived during their five-month stay. Throughout the day, visitors can walk the short distance to the fort and receive a history lesson from the Lewis and Clark actors. This ‘hands-on’ experience is exactly the setting that manager Brad Winn wants to create for the museum’s visitors.

“We have exhibits here but not a lot of computerized stuff,” Winn said. “What we try to appeal to is the casual visitor either following the trail or school groups or just [people] interested in Lewis and Clark, and then the ‘Clarkies,’ which are the real interested, the really into the Lewis and Clark history.”

Winn said he has made it his passion to carry on the experience of the men at Camp River Dubois. The final exhibit of the museum is a wall covered in letters the men sent to their loved ones at home or taken from the pages of a diary from their trek across America. Pictures of animals and plants surround the letters, reminding visitors of the things the men saw and discovered on the exploration.

“What we did here is try to use the words of the members of the expedition to tell the story,” Winn said. “In other words, we are not going to interpret it, we are going to let them tell us what they saw.”