Source: United States Army
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas — Students and faculty from Fort Hays State University, in Hays, Kansas, and the Shenandoah Center for Immersive Learning, in Winchester, Virginia, were at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, May 27, 2026, to share data gleaned from motion-triggered wildlife cameras and obtain video and photographic footage for multiple projects associated early exploration of the area. The location was a stop along the route surveyed by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the early 1800s during the Corps of Discovery expedition.
Snapshot USA
Snapshot USA is an ongoing survey project of the Smithsonian Institution to monitor wildlife using game cameras, conducted by ecologists from universities and organizations across the country. For the nation’s 250th anniversary this year, Snapshot USA collaborators are resurveying the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition Trail, focusing on the area within 80 kilometers of the original trail. The current data will eventually be compared with observations noted in Lewis and Clark’s journals to see how wildlife species distributions and habitats have changed since then.
Snapshot USA collaborator Dr. Lorelei Patrick, associate professor in biological sciences at FHSU and associate curator of mammals at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, connected with Fort Leavenworth Natural Resources Specialist Neil Bass to participate in the Lewis and Clark project. She said the collaboration for project participation was easy to accomplish, with FHSU students already conducting wildlife surveys on post, and the fact that the installation is located within the boundaries specified for the project. The Corps of Discovery expedition passed through the area in the summer of 1804.
“I thought it was important and good to share our camera data with a larger entity that could use it, and thus show the good stewardship that the Army provides and has been providing at Fort Leavenworth for almost 200 years,” Bass said about participating in the project.
FHSU scientists have been collecting data from wildlife cameras set up on Fort Leavenworth for their own studies and the Snapshot USA Lewis and Clark Trail project. While the university’s study is focused on medium-sized mammals, such as raccoons, skunks and opossums, FHSU graduate student Elizabeth Horinek said the cameras have also been picking up several white-tailed deer and coyotes, as well as some squirrels and a bobcat.
Virtual reality project
Students from the Shenandoah Center for Immersive Learning are travelling to several sites along the Lewis and Clark trail this summer to collect footage for multiple video projects, tying into the Smithsonian’s project as well as working on another supported by the Lewis and Clark Trail Association.
The Shenandoah students recorded interviews with Patrick and Bass and got footage of Patrick and Horinek checking one of the trail cameras on the floodplain by Sherman Army Airfield, then they trekked to the fort’s champion pecan tree near the river to take 360-degree views, video and photographs.
During the summer of 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition made note of pecan trees seen on the shore of what would later become Fort Leavenworth when travelling on the Missouri River.
“When we’re going back to the Lewis and Clark history, Lewis and Clark actually mentioned those pecan trees in their journals on the July 1, 1804, journal entry, and so (the students) could then look at these historic trees that are actually mentioned in the journal for this original assessment that they’re kind of following and mimicking as part of the Lewis and Clark (Trail Association),” Bass said.
Bass said at least one of the pecan trees on Fort Leavenworth is large enough, and thus old enough, to have possibly been among the trees spotted by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
“It’s very possible that that tree and some others — there’s probably at least two trees out there that could (have been) actually standing when Lewis and Clark came by, were actually big trees when Lewis and Clark went by — and then some of those others probably were seedlings.”
Shenandoah Immersive Media Specialist Lee Graff, project lead for “Lewis and Clark VR,” a virtual reality student production funded by the Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance, said he and a group of students travelled across the country two years ago to interview historians and capture footage at significant sites. Now he is travelling with a crew of work-study students to several sites along the trail, from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Oregon coast, for a second iteration and expansion of the project.
“(On the first trip), we did the story of Lewis and Clark, the expedition. Now we’re wanting to talk a bit more about the scientific stuff — the plants, the animals, flora, fauna and geography that they encountered that white people from the east had never seen before,” Graff said. “And we’re interviewing people about Native (American) perspectives, first on Lewis and Clark, second on American westward expansion in general, to add that to a 2.0 version of the experience that more fully tells the stories associated with that, because one of the things Lewis and Clark did is, as they traveled up the Missouri River, they encountered more than 50 different tribal groups and clans (and) did diplomacy with them. Some went better than others.”
Graff said the “Lewis and Clark VR” project isn’t part of a class, but it is allowing the work-study students to have an immersive experience in their field of study as they travel across the country, without compensation for their time but with meals and lodging paid for.
For more information on the “Lewis and Clark VR” project, including how to view the first iteration for free, visit https://www.su.edu/scil/projects/lewis-and-clark-vr/.
For more information on the Snapshot USA Lewis and Clark Resurvey project, visit https://nationalzoo.si.edu/conservation/lewis-clark-resurvey-snapshot-250th.