Salmon, Idaho and the Sacagawea Interpretive Center

Wednesday, Sept 4th – Our time in Wallace wrapped up our exploration of Northern Idaho. We were now heading south through the town of Salmon. The drive was pretty and followed some of the area that Lewis and Clark had been through as they determined which route across the Bitterroot Mountains to take.

 

We had read about the Sacagawea Interpretive center in Salmon. It is unique as the only interpretive center along the Lewis and Clark trail that is devoted to the Lemhi-Shoshone guide who was the only female member of their party.

We had driven about 6 hours, but crossed from pacific time to Mountain time, losing an hour that we had not counted on. We arrived in Salmon about 3:30 pm, a bit worried about getting to the Interpretive Center with enough time to visit before the  5pm closing. We hastily chose an RV park  in town, dropped the camper and headed out to see Sacagawea.

We arrived at the Interpretive Center about 4pm. We were disappointed with this whole experience. We really had been expecting more……this area had been home to Sacagawea and her Shoshoni people. The interpretive center was small and limited in information. The volunteer in the center kept telling us that he had wanted to leave early that day. We felt rush looking at what small amount of info that they had. We watched a short film that focused on Lewis and Clark, and barely made mention of the Shoshone natives much less Sacagawea.

After a hurried visit in the center, we strolled around the short interpretive trail……

The few displays were well done, but limited in explanation.

The trail meandered down to the river front…….

And included displays of teepees…… canvas……

And grass covered. Things were set up to look like a native village, but no mention was made of how Sacagawea fit into the picture. This could have been so much more……

We went back to our camper. In our haste, we had chosen a small RV park where we were back to back with another camper. It is nights like these that I am glad that we are self contained. We could close the blinds and pretend that we were by ourselves.