BOONVILLE, Mo. – After traveling 300 miles through a cold rain I arrived at dusk to find this Missouri River town dusted in snow. Pretty.

In early June, 1803, the Corps of Discovery passed near here. Sergeant Patric Gass received a report from a pair of the company’s hunters, who had been traveling by horseback, that the country was “the best they’d ever seen” It still fits today. The photo is near Portland, Mo.