The Omaha World-Herald
By David Hendee
Wednesday May 12, 2004
PONCA, Neb. - Planning is ahead of schedule for Nebraska 's heritage festival commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition's first tribal council with American Indians.
"We could open this event in three weeks," Vic Gutman of Omaha told the Nebraska Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission meeting Tuesday at Ponca State Park .
"We're 11 weeks out and in fabulous shape," said Stacy Maddux.
Gutman and Maddux of Vic Gutman & Associates, an Omaha marketing and special events company, are organizing Nebraska 's national heritage festival, one of 15 "signature events" across the nation commemorating the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Four days of official events are set for July 31 through Aug. 3 at Fort Atkinson State Park in Fort Calhoun and Elmwood Park in Omaha . A marketing campaign to promote the events begins Monday. It also will tout the National Park Service's traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit and a group of expedition re-enactors from Missouri .
Ron Hull, chairman of the Nebraska commission, said progress continues on an original dramatization of the first tribal council and an original Philip Glass concerto - the two gifts that he hopes will be Nebraska 's contributions to the bicentennial legacy.
Commissioners also heard plans from local organizers of Lewis and Clark bicentennial events in northeast Nebraska and the Sioux City, Iowa, region.
Sally Snowe of Wynot , Neb. , and Mary Rose Pinkelman of St. James , Neb. , told the commission of production plans in Crofton, Hartington and Verdigre for the third season of a play about the misfortunes of Pvt. George Shannon.
Shannon was the youngest member of the expedition. He became lost in August 1804 while searching for the expedition's horses near present-day Wynot. He was found barely alive after wandering for 16 days with nothing to eat but berries and a rabbit he shot with a stick from his rifle because he was out of ammunition.
Donna Goodier, director of the South Sioux City ( Neb. ) Convention and Visitor Bureau, said the region has several events scheduled to coincide with expedition anniversaries in August.
They include remembrances of the death and burial of Sgt. Charles Floyd, the only member of the expedition to die during the 1804-06 journey, and a Fish Camp II event.
Fish Camp II celebrates the expedition's camp a few miles south of today's Dakota City , Neb. , where Lewis and Clark 's men caught 318 fish one day and 800 the next by dragging a creek with willows and bark.