40. George Rogers Clark National Historical Park, Indiana

               Hello and welcome back to our blog.  In this post we travel to Indiana to visit the memorial to the man whose exploits secured the northwest for the United States and opened the west to expansion.

Entrance sign.

BACKGROUND:

               In 1778, as the American War of Independence dragged on, the governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, approved an expedition to secure American claims to the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi river.  To command this expedition, Virginian George Rogers Clark was appointed to lead men down the Ohio river and capture several British forts in the Illinois wilderness.  Despite having a far smaller army than promised, Clark seized the British posts with complete surprise and managed to broker peace with several Indian tribes.  During the winter the British struck back, the British governor of the Northwest Territories, Henry Hamilton, personally leading a force from Detroit which recaptured Fort Sackville on the eastern bank of the Wabash river.

               Clark, realizing that a British resurgence might erase all of the Americans' gains, gathered up his small force and marched back across Illinois from St. Louis in the dead of winter.  As they approached their objective, Clark and his men came across the Wabash river, swollen from winter snows and rains which had turned the entire area around Fort Sackville into an icy swamp.  Undaunted, Clark lead his men onward, wading through miles of freezing cold water.  Finally, after completing the arduous march, Clark’s troops assaulted Fort Sackville.  Thinking that he was facing a far superior force, the Governor Hamilton surrendered to Clark on February 25^th, 1779.  The capture of the British posts throughout the frontier allowed the United States to go into peace negotiations with a much stronger bargaining position, allowing the new nation to firmly claim the Northwest Territory, the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

               As for George Rogers Clark himself, despite his heroics in helping win the west, he was soon eclipsed in fame by his younger brother William Clark, who along with Meriwether Lewis led the Corps of Discovery on their famous journey across the west to the Pacific Ocean.  To memorialize this overlooked hero, the state of Indiana with assistance from the Federal government, commissioned a memorial to Clark on the location of Fort Sackville in Vincennes, Indiana.  The classical style monument was completed in 1936 and designated a unit of the National Park Service in 1966.

The statue at the center of the monument rotunda memorializing George Rogers Clark.

THE HISTORICAL PARK:

               George Rogers Clark National Historical Park is located on the east bank of the Wabash river in the center of Vincennes, Indiana.  The park consists of a large park space surrounding the George Rogers Clark monument along with a visitor center.  The monument is a classical style granite rotunda, at the center of which is a larger-than-life bronze statue of George Rogers Clark.  Along the walls of the rotunda are murals depicting Clark’s campaign to capture Fort Sackville.  On the park grounds are two additional statues, one memorializing Francis Vigo, an Italian merchant who acted as an American spy and helped bankroll Clark’s expedition.  The second lies in front of the Old Cathedral of Vincennes depicting Father Pierre Gibault, a French Priest who aided Clark by rallying the French inhabitants of the region to the American cause.

The exterior of the monument.

TRAVEL TIPS:

               George Rogers Clark National Historical Park is open year-round with holiday exceptions from 9am to 5pm daily.  The park is located at the center of downtown Vincennes, Indiana, a roughly two-hour drive southwest from Indianapolis.  The visitor center contains a short film.  The monument, having been built in the 1930s, is not handicapped accessible.  Passport stamps can be found at the visitor center.  In addition, Vincennes is home to several other historic sites, including Grouseland, the mansion of President William Henry Harrison, which may also be of interest to visitors.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS:

A distant view of the monument.

Two of the murals in the rotunda, depicting the opening of Ohio to settlement at Marietta, and the Louisiana purchase at St. Louis, both made possible by George Rogers Clark's seizure of Fort Sackville.

A statue of Francis Vigo, Clark's financier, on the bank of the Wabash river.