A Brigham Young University history professor has been selected as the 2004 scholar in residence at the William P. Sherman Library and Archives at the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Mont.
Jay Buckley, assistant professor of history and director of the Native American Studies program at BYU, will give a series of five seminars and a keynote lecture as part of the 200th anniversary celebration of the beginning of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
"It is a tremendous honor to be selected by a national organization to represent it at its flagship interpretive center," Buckley said.
Buckley will also conduct television and radio interviews, meet with some of the 75,000 expected tourists traveling the Lewis and Clark trail this summer and deliver presentations to various groups and organizations throughout Montana. He will be the fifth scholar in residence at the center.
Buckley's June 27 keynote address, titled "William Clark: A Practical, Dependable, Indispensable Man," will be the capstone event of the Lewis and Clark Festival held in Great Falls.
Involvement in the celebrations is high in Montana, which has more miles of Lewis and Clark Expedition trail than any other state.
Buckley's research focuses on American Indian relations, the fur trade, the post-expedition life of William Clark and overland migration.
He is finishing revisions on a book to be published by the University of Oklahoma Press detailing Clark's life as an American Indian superintendent.
The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation has promoted the heritage of the Lewis and Clark Expedition for the past 30 years. The national office is located in Great Falls, as is a public research library maintained at the U.S. Forest Service Lewis and Clark Trail Interpretive Center.
The library is one of the premier repositories for the study of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806 and the largest of its kind between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
For more information about Buckley or the Interpretive Center, visit http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/lewisclark/lcic/, or call Jeff LaRock at (406) 452-5661.
Writer: Thomas Grover
