When the Corps finally reached the Pacific Ocean, a crucial question arose: Where to set up winter camp? Lewis and Clark’s response: Let’s hold a vote. By now the captains knew the party would follow their orders. Without question. And yet—let’s hold a vote. Everyone was heard—even Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian woman, and York, Clark’s black slave. Jefferson may have lost his Northwest Passage, but he would get his Empire of Liberty yet.

The expedition voted to winter on the south side of the Columbia River near what is now Astoria, Oregon. After presenting their winter fort to the Clatsop, a neighboring tribe, they set out for home on March 23, 1806. Lewis and Clark led the Corps into St. Louis on September 23, 1806. Having given them up for dead, the American public welcomed them back as national heroes, and one U.S. senator exclaimed to Lewis that it was as if he had come back from the moon.