LOLO - Dan Hall knew his archaeological find was bulletproof when he recovered mercury from the "night soil" of an old latrine 2 1/2 miles up Lolo Creek from its confluence with the Bitterroot River.
Hall knew Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had camped along Lolo Creek, calling the place Travelers' Rest.
The latrine, the baron insisted, had to be precisely 300 feet from the kitchen area.
And Hall knew that two of the expedition's members were sick during their encampment at Travelers' Rest. And that Lewis had prescribed Dr. Benjamin Rush's Thunderbolts - pills containing 60 percent mercury, a concoction so toxic it purged everything from the body.
So the two ailing soldiers likely spent much of their stay at the latrine, and likely left behind a good bit of mercury.
So when tests showed mercury throughout 218 samples taken from the latrine, Hall knew he had absolute evidence of the exact location of Travelers' Rest.
"The latrine has the ability to stand on its own as proof," Hall said Thursday. "But when combined with everything else, it is bulletproof."
That makes Travelers' Rest unique - a Lewis and Clark campsite pinpointed by a wealth of physical evidence, including not only the latrine's toxic contents but also a button, a blue trading bead, melted lead, charcoal from a cookfire and a musket ball.
Nowhere along the expedition's 8,000-mile route of May 1804 to September 1806 has so much physical evidence been found, Hall said.
"There is more evidence here than anywhere else on the trail," he said. "This is the only place that has gone through such an exhaustive process."
In fact, there are but two places in Montana where physical evidence has been found of the expedition's passage. At the other, Pompeys Pillar, Lewis etched his name in stone.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition twice took respite at Travelers' Rest, first in September 1805 en route west, then again on the homeward journey in June and July of 1806.
"This is a place of national and international significance," said Loren Flynn, executive director of Travelers' Rest Preservation and Heritage Association.
Flynn's group manages the state park south of Lolo that now occupies the campsite used by Lewis and Clark, and for centuries before them, by the Salish, Kootenai and Nez Perce Indians.
"The network of trails that converged here still shapes the way the West looks today," Flynn said during a celebration at the park Thursday afternoon.
The Indian campsite along Lolo Creek was "amazingly large and amazingly old," Hall said. On the western perimeter of the Lewis and Clark campsite, researchers have found carbon in a fire ring dated to 941 B.C.
All those at the gathering gave thanks to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes for their support of the investigation, and also to the Travelers' Rest Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation for getting it all started.
"In the beginning, it was just the chapter," Hall said.
"It was just a bunch of Average Joes - history buffs," said Mike Wallace, president of the Travelers' Rest chapter. "And it was one question: Where was Travelers' Rest?"
For nine years, the amateur and - in a few cases, professional - historians kept the investigation going with their money, volunteerism, enthusiasm and insistence on verifying and validating the campsite.
Over those years, the investigation included infrared aerial photographs (which showed evidence of fire and tepee rings), study of the celestial and geographic coordinates taken by the expedition, archaeological digs, carbon dating, exhaustive historical research - everything technologically or anecdotally available.
Now, the evidence has been peer-reviewed by 12 scientists, Hall said. They tried to poke holes in the conclusions, but each time, the location held up.
Could the latrine have belonged to the military expedition of Capt. John Mullan or Wallace Stevens? the reviewers asked.
No, Hall was able to reply. By the mid-1800s, the military no longer used Baron von Steuben's manual to organize their camps.
Hall and others still have to convince the National Park Service to relocate the Travelers' Rest National Historic site from the confluence of Lolo Creek and the Bitterroot River.
It is the only wrongly located National Historic Site in the country.
And only 18 of the 60 possible dig sites have been investigated, Hall said. "This is an incredibly rich place."
"Already, Travelers' Rest has produced a major advancement of our understanding of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," he said. "And we're just getting started."
"This is a place of stories, and whether large or small, old or new, they are stories not found anywhere else," Hall said.
Some are stories thousands of years old. Some are global in their reach. Some are stories that reshaped the h istory of the West. Some are intensely personal.
Best of all, Hall said, some have yet to be discovered and others have yet to be written.
The history of Travelers' Rest, he said, is far from finished.
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com
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