What a fabulous find! The brown sign on US-95 indicated Charbonneau Grave Site 3 miles. There are two possible routes from Crane to Caldwell. We chose the southern option, OR-78 to US-95, for no particular reason other than it seems we traveled US-20 east from Crane the last time. We made a good choice for along the way we encountered that brown sign leading us 3.1 miles north along Danner Road to the location that was once Inskip Station and later Ruby Ranch and the ghost town of Danner. This is where Jean Baptiste Charbonneau succumbed to pneumonia in 1866 and was laid to rest. The youngest member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, as the newborn son of Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, was adopted after his mother’s death by William Lewis who nicknamed him Pomp. Educated in St Louis and Europe he was multilingual and had a varied and colorful career in the American West. Among his exploits as mountain man and wilderness guide, he led the Mormon Battalion on its 1847 march from Council Bluffs to San Diego. Did Uncle William know Charbonneau? At least know of him? We weren’t the only ones here today. We enjoyed conversation with a local of this Owyhee River valley and with the family of a young man and fellow history buff on his way to studies at Boise State.
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