The salt-refining efforts of the expedition are recalled in this monument at Seaside, Ore. (Photo courtesy Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation Inc.)

At Fort Clatsop, the captains sent a small detachment of men 14 miles up the coast, where they boiled sea water in five large kettles for six weeks -- obtaining 20 gallons or about 160 pounds of salt. It was salt for the winter and the return home.

The salt seasoned food, covering what often was meat already ripe and infested with bacteria and worse.

Given the effort the expedition put into hauling and refining salt, an observer would have to say salt was very important.

Sgt. Patrick Gass describes fish without salt as "insipid." And Meriwether Lewis roasted a morel mushroom, ate it without salt, pepper or grease, and found it "insipid tasteless food."

On the other hand, after sampling the sea salt, says Lewis: "We found it excellent, fine, strong, & white; this was great treat to myself and most of the party, for my friend, Capt. Clark declares it to be a mear matter of indifference with him whether he uses it or not; for myself, I must confess I felt a considerable inconvenience from the want of it."

All of the salt used on the expedition wasn't for seasoning, it also was used as a preservative: On Thursday, Aug. 23, 1804, when expedition member Sgt. John Ordway saw his first buffalo, he writes: "Fields came to the boat and informed us that he had killed a 'bull Buffalo.' but this was the first I ever saw & was a great curiousity to me. So we pickled down our buffelow meat & jerked the venison."

And the members of the expedition made and ate salt pork.

On the lower reaches of the Missouri, the expedition came across several salt springs and salt licks. A person could take a feather and scrape salt from the surface of the earth around the spring, according to Donald Nell, writing in We Proceeded On in 1991.