The Confluence & the Levee Pathway

Lewiston sits at the confluence where the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped in October 1805, building the canoes that carried them down the Columbia system; the town was platted in 1861 as the first incorporated settlement in what became Idaho Territory, and was the territory’s first capital before the move to Boise. Steamboats ran the Snake from this head of navigation; the port district’s grain terminals and the 1975 Lower Granite Dam pool made Lewiston the farthest-inland seaport on the West Coast, 465 river miles from the Pacific. The levee pathway was built on the flood-protection levees along the Clearwater after the 1970s dam era, and it now threads the confluence through the city’s parks and marinas. The pathway’s riverside parks carry the expedition story in plaques and sculpture — Lewis and Clark’s October 1805 camp and canoe-building site sat in this reach of the Clearwater — and the pathway connects them with the marinas, the Port of Lewiston’s grain terminals and the Interstate Bridge crossing to Clarkston, Washington, on the far bank. Its flat grade makes it the valley’s family ride and the standard riverside run.