Excerpt from Senator Ben Nelson's speech at the Launch of the
Lewis and Clark Bicentennial January 15, 2003, Charlottesville,
Va. It might be strange for some people who studied Lewis and
Clark in elementary school to hear about their journeys through
Nebraska and, in fact, to hear that Nebraska was among the new
land acquired from the French by Thomas Jefferson, but in 1804
these adventurers and observers first charted for the American
government the currents of Nebraska's rivers and the scope of
Nebraska's plains. In their search for river passage further
west, William Clark observed that the Niobrara River of Nebraska
was unnavigable -- it was a bit too intrepid for our intrepid
explorers. The Niobrara River posed different challenges for the
people of Nebraska just a decade ago. Then it was threatened by
overuse and unwise development. It seemed likely that the river
that had stopped Lewis and Clark would cease to exist as it had
in the memories of generations of Nebraskans. But we could not
let the oppor