The Corps of Discovery travelled within today's park boundaries but explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and members of the expedition never set foot in the actual caverns. President Theodore Roosevelt used the name Lewis & Clark when he made the caverns a National Monument on the same day the Grand Canyon received this honor. Roosevelt named the site Lewis and Clark Cavern National Monument--recognizing the fact that it had been over 100 years since the famed Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery expedition and nothing in the federal system had yet been named for them. The Grand Canyon went on to become a National Park while Lewis & Clark Caverns became Montana's first state park.
