Local historian to host Lewis and Clark presentation

Published 5:36 pm Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Fort George event marks 220 years since Corps of Discovery wintered at Fort Clatsop

Rex Ziak, a local historian who has lived in Astoria his whole life, will be headlining Clatsop County Historical Society’s Thursday Night Talk, “Lewis and Clark’s Pacific Arrival,” a history presentation, at Fort George Brewery at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 18. 

A bit of background

Ziak was born in Astoria; his father, uncles and grandfather all were employed in the logging industry. 

“By the mid ‘50s, there were no more trees — Clatsop County was all logged off,” said Ziak. “My dad looked across the river, and he saw the Willapa hills were all old growth, all rugged, and it hadn’t been logged yet. So he moved the family across the river to the Washington side because he knew he’d have employment for the rest of his life.”

Ziak said, for him, like for many people living at the mouth of the Columbia River, the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition was an ever-present feature that almost fades into the background.

He recalls the moment his fascination with the Lewis and Clark expedition began. He was a cameraman with an ABC documentary crew on a ship in the mid-Atlantic. The vessel was being hammered by a storm, and one of the producers asked Ziak, “What day did the Lewis and Clark expedition leave Fort Clatsop?” 

“At that moment, it hit me that I didn’t know,” said Ziak. “And it was so embarrassing.”

Ziak made it his mission to understand the expedition, at first familiarizing himself with the basics before eventually poring through the expedition’s journals. And then he found something in the historical record that shifted the world’s understanding of the expedition.

Ziak saw that it took Lewis and Clark 30 days to travel a distance of only 17 miles and that the expedition never originally intended to spend their winter on the North Coast.

The Corps of Discovery initially intended on wintering by The Dalles or Sandy River, east of present-day Portland. But they were practically lured to the Coast, in part, in search of elk.

The Fort George event

Ziak says he hopes the presentation at Fort George will bring attendees a greater understanding of the history and of the origin story of European settlement in the Northwest.

“It is sort of the origin story of our existence … Lewis and Clark are so remarkable because they wrote everything down,” said Ziak. “And so while we didn’t have photography back in the early 1800s, they gave us a verbal snapshot of what this place looked like back then.”

Ziak says during this year’s presentation marking 220 years since the Corps of Discovery wintered at Fort Clatsop, he will focus more on their time getting marooned at Tongue Point or getting lost in the woods of what would someday become Astoria.

“I will give the whole story,” said Ziak. “For the local residents who live there, it’s going to be something they had no idea about before.”