Following the death of Meriwether Lewis on Oct. 11, 1809, at
Grinder’s Stand, an inn along the Natchez Trace in middle
Tennessee, his body was buried near the inn’s stable—with no
formal ceremony—and his grave was covered with wooden fence
rails. For more than 30 years, Gov. Lewis’ grave remained
abandoned and unmarked. Tennessee lawmakers established Lewis
County as a memorial to Gov. Lewis in 1843 and allocated $500 to
erect a monument over his grave. The monument, built in 1848,
still stands along the National Park Service’s Natchez Trace
Parkway. It is about eight miles southeast of Hohenwald, Tenn.
The monument features a broken column, symbolizing Lewis’ early
and tragic death. Unfortunately, the grave was abandoned once
more and became overgrown with vegetation until the 1920s, when
the Meriwether Lewis Memorial Association was formed. Through
the association’s work, President Calvin Coolidge designated the
gravesite a national monument in 1925. That same year, the U.S.
War Department assumed maintenan