In 1803, just a few years after George Washington established a federal armory in the Virginia village, President Jefferson concluded the Louisiana Purchase, more than doubling the geographic size of the United States. The man he dispatched to explore this vast territory, Meriwether Lewis, went first to Harpers Ferry to buy “Rifles, Tomahawks & knives” for his expedition, as well as a collapsible iron boat frame that could be covered in hides—a vessel he called “the Experiment.”
