Sentimental Journey: Railcrusing the Lewis & Clark Trail

By Sheila Sobell and Richard Every

            Call it nostalgia for America's front porch era when the big event of the day was to watch a Northern Pacific train roll by and wave to the passengers. Targeted to the active senior market for whom as youngsters a rail trip represented the pinnacle of luxury and adventure, the American Spirit Tours has put together a sentimental journey back to the time when the American West was just opening up to passenger travel.

            With white linen service in the dining car and gourmet meals, riding the rails on the American Spirit is a luxurious way to see majestic scenery and small towns that freeways have long since bypassed. At a leisurely pace of 25 miles per hour, luxury travel aboard the Spirit's vintage 1940s and 50s club and dining cars is more akin to cruising aboard a luxury sea liner - hence the term "rail cruising." 

            To experience the newest offerings from the Oregon Rail Corp. which owns The American Spirit, we opted to take its signature tour, The Montana Rockies Rail Tour - a three day, two night trip from Livingston, Montana to Sandpoint, Idaho. It follows in the footsteps of the original Lewis & Clark expedition. By booking seats in The Big Sky class, we dined in the manner traditional to glamorous travel in The Golden Age of Rail, and lounged in dome-cars with curved-glass windows that offered magnificent view of the countryside.

All Aboard at the Livingston Depot.

For many of the travelers on this tour, the highlight of the tip was the impressive Livingston Depot which a century ago served as the first railroad gateway to Yellowstone National Park and the midway link between the line's endpoint at Seattle and St. Paul.   Named in honor of Johnston Livingston, a railroad director form St. Paul, the sprawling depot, complete with Italian Romanesque arches, columns and marble floors, is the Northern Pacific's largest round house between Minnesota and the West Coast. Formerly, it was headquarters for the Northern Pacific's Central Division.

            Built to service steam engines and offer hospitality to visitors traveling to Yellowstone National Park, the restored depot is actually the third depot at Livingston as the previous ones burned down. It was donated to the city by Burlington Northern, Northern Pacific's successor, after it relinquished its office space there, eight years after passenger service to Southern Montana was suspended. Restored by the city, the Livingston Depot Center Museum is an historical gem, both because of its architecture and its collection of transportation memorabilia. In the main hall is a series of exhibits depicting the progression of transportation forms used by the West's early settlers. Shaped like a very large basin supported by lathes of wood and covered with buffalo skins, the earliest transport on display is something called the bull boat.

            Another exhibit tells the story of Old Man Raven, one of the first Cheyennes to buy a car that ran by itself instead of being pulled by a horse.  It was nicknamed the "popping machine" by Raven's grandson Henry Tall because of the sound it made as it ran along.  In an interview for an oral history project, Tall described the terror he and his grandfather's maiden journey inflicted on the community as the pair fought to gain control of the steering, running up and down the sidewalk.

            The museum also has some terrific interactive exhibits like a computer game in which you, as the engineer, simulate backing-up and switching the engine. There are also a scale model of the train yard, a life-size dispatcher's office, photographs dating from the days of the steam engine and videos.

From May to October there are guided tours of the depot. In winter the building serves as the town's cultural center.

When the conductor blew his whistle, we reluctantly left this fascinating museum to board the elegantly restored 10-car American Spirit to travel the original route carved out by Lewis & Clark 200 years ago. The Spirit today is the only passenger train on the original 475 miles of Northern Pacific Route track.

Recollectin' with Captain Clark

            The most entertaining and educational aspect of this sentimental journey back to the opening of the West by Lewis and Clark was the tour's living history program in the person of the venerable Captain Clark himself. "We interviewed 3000 men for our expedition," he explained as we huddled over the chart on which his route was traced. "We made sure to ask them how adept they were at shooting, navigating a river and trail blazing. But later we realized that what we should have asked is how well they could sing, dance and play the fiddle as this was the way we established a sense of trust between us and the Indians, and kept up morale."

            Clark's alter ego was poet cowboy Teddy Blue who also entertains guests with a smattering of western songs and harmonies picked out on his banjo and harmonica. Like Clark, he offered charming insights into the early days of the Wild West and gave new meaning to terms that have long been part of American vernacular. "Do you know how we got the term 'cowpoke'?" he asked. "To get the cattle loaded on and off the trains, we had to push, pummel and poke 'em. So they called us cowpokes."

            Grabbing the Gold Ring at Missoula

            Having heard that Missoula boasted one of the few hand-carved carousels built after the Depression, when we detrained for the night to go to our hotel, we raced to Caras Park to catch the last ride before it shut down for the evening. The delicately carved 37 prancing horses, chariots and gargoyles that took 50 wood carvers four years to sculpt was so enchanting that we wanted to take it home. We settled instead for the next best thing - lots of photos and a beautiful glass dome music box containing an intricately carved and bejeweled white carousel pony.

            Sentimental Journey Meets Customer's Expectations

            The Oregon Rail Corp. knows its market well. For 8th grade history teacher Betty Doty, the trip was "a chance to refresh her memories of the history and beauty of Montana so I could bring the subject more alive to my students."

For another retired couple, it was the first chance in 20 years to catch a glimpse the high school where they met and courted. For a 70 -year- old father and his middle-aged son, it was an opportunity for Dad to indulge his passion for antique trains.

            To reach an expanded market, this year the company is broadening its excursions to include nine new tours for a total of 12 offerings. In hopes of attracting more young families and college students, the tours will add more living history figures, menus indigenous to the period, educational and recreational programs, boat excursions, and motorcoach sightseeing forays into the Grand Teton/Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.

If You Go

 Montana Rockies Rail Tour, three days and two nights one-way rail tour between Livingston and Sandpoint costs $699 per person in The Big Sky class. The less expensive Explore class ($499) offers roomy reclining seats, oversized windows and an up-market box lunch. Passengers in both classes overnight in the same quality hotels.

Two new tours- In the Path of Lewis & Clark (eight days, seven nights, rail and motorcoach from Bozeman to Portland) and Legends of the Golden West (10 days, nine nights, rail and motorcoach between Rapid City, ND and Portland, Ore.) - have been selected as two of the White House Millennium Program's American Pathways 2000 itineraries. They were chosen by a prestigious group of historians, The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Parks to be part of 74 American cultural heritage tourism products. In honoring them, the Department of Commerce for Tourism Industries said they "share American stories that are the heart and soul of the very image of the United States." 

For more information on these tours, call 1 800-519-7245.

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Sheila Sobell and Richard Every are freelance travel writers.