By PETER JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Writer

Air Force, equipment engineers helping in search for iron vessel

Oh, how explorers and science buffs Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would have marveled if they were in a field a couple miles south of Great Falls Monday.

Air Force-contracted engineers began using the latest space-age technology -- highly sensitive metal detectors placed on a little tractor dubbed "Lewis" and an ATV dubbed "Clark" that were precisely driven by computer-controlled robots.

Antennae on the vehicles provided both global positioning and ground-based speed measuring systems to insure the robot-controlled vehicle covered all of the fields in their sweeps. The system was developed to detect hidden mines and to spot weak spots in airport runways.

As the little vehicles drive along at 3 mph, an "electromagnetic inductance coil system" toted on a cart on back shoots magnetic currents into the ground and measures reflected energy in order to detect signs of metal as deep as 20 feet.

The purpose of the two to four days of criss-crossing "sweeps" of 15 acres of land owned by former County Commissioner Harry Mitchell is to pinpoint the location of the explorers' last camp as they completed the difficult, month-long portage around the area's five waterfalls in 1805.

More specifically, the high-tech team is looking for magnetic clues that will help Ken Karsmizki, the premier archeologist of Lewis and Clark camp sites, excavate one of the Corps of Discovery's few mistakes.

When he was affiliated with Bozeman's Museum of the Rockies, Karsmizki spent three years in the late 1990s trying to find Lewis' biggest disappointment, a large iron boat.

The explorers had toted the frame of the 220-pound, 36-feet long, 4?-feet wide boat from the East Coast. President Jefferson and Lewis designed it, Karsmizki said, but detailed plans were probably burned when Northern soldiers set fire to Harper's Ferry in the Civil War before Confederate soldiers could claim the armory.

Lewis had envisioned abandoning more cumbersome boats after portaging around the falls, and using the large iron-frame boat to canoe more quickly toward the Rocky Mountains.

But after the crew spent two weeks of preparing it by sewing animal skins and making due with a substitute glue since pine pitch wasn't available, Lewis was "mortifyed," as he wrote in the journal, to see the iron boat sink.

With no time to try a better combination of animal skins, the explorers cached the boat and hastily made dugout canoes out of cottonwood.

Karsmizki said his friend, noted Lewis and Clark historian Stephen Ambrose, believes that uncovering the iron-frame boat "would be like finding the Holy Grail of Lewis and Clark artifacts."

It was easily the most expensive and heaviest piece of equipment the explorers took on their trip, the archeologist said, and relatively few of their artifacts exist today.

But the high-tech metal detectors will only be able to detect unexplained areas of magnetic activity. If they're massive enough, Karsmizki might begin excavating this fall, but more likely will wait until next spring because of other commitments.

Finding it also would give insight into engineering solutions of the time.

Plus, spotting its location and thus the location of the upper camp, would allow him, with help he will be getting from NASA's remote, space-based surveys, to get a better read on how accurate the explorers' maps and survey readings were.

But it's no sure thing the boat will be found, the archeologist told visiting students from Montana Tech.

For one thing, he said, some Lewis and Clark buffs believe the explorers may have dug up the boat on their return trip and traded the scrap metal to Indians. But that's not mentioned in the journals.

It's also possible that the river changed channels and the boat was washed away, he added.

If this week's high tech survey doesn't detect the iron boat Karsmizki said he will be convinced that it is no longer buried in this particular location, which he had calculated from Clark's log entry.

After all, his own crew had done fairly precise measurements for three summers in the 1990s, using a different method.

"There would be no rational reason to continue looking for the iron boat here if we don't find signs of it this week with this technology," he said.

Wintec Inc. operates the system for the Air Force Research Laboratory, with the assistance of a University of Florida robotics professor.

"Capts. Lewis and Clark would have been blown away by all this technology," said David Weston, the administrator of Montana State University's TechLink Center. "They were always interested in science."

It was Weston who helped link the Air Force's high tech robotic surveying to Karsmizki's history digs.

He remembered reading a small flyer from the Air Force program after chatting with Karsmizki about the problems of finding the iron boat. Weston made several calls and e-mails and persuaded the Air Force to volunteer the equipment and operators. Air Force officials said they wanted to demonstrate the equipment's versatility for commercial use.

Landowner Mitchell also is excited.

"This is fantastic to be able to use such advanced technology to help confirm exactly where the camp site and iron boat are," he said.

Mitchell said his grandfather, also named Harry Mitchell, and father, Fergus Mitchell, long believed the explorers had camped on what would become their dairy land, but it was difficult to prove.

Great Falls founder Paris Gibson, apparently misreading Clark's journal had figured the site was about a half mile to the north and had it marked with a concrete marker in the 1920s.

Karsmizki spent 12 years of often frustrating research before he could conclusively pinpoint the location of Lewis and Clark's Lower Portage camp sight about 10 miles northeast of Great Falls in 1998.

He accepted a promotion to be curator of the Columbia Gorge Discover Center in the Dalles, Ore., this spring,

He said the Oregon museum was able to provide him more research money and will allow him to continue working at several Lewis and Clark sites around the Northwest.

Mitchell and Karsmizki asked residents to avoid coming out to the survey site, which is on private land, so they wouldn't disturb the work.

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