River at Humphry's Ford, section 30, township 8, range 2E.[1] This was the dry route, the preferable one the year round. Another shorter course ran northwest and crossed many of the streams which the highland route headed. There can be little doubt that Clark's guides chose this latter course. By Clark's Memoir we know it to have been a dry season, and the shortest, and probably the least traveled, course would best suit his plan of surprising Kaskaskia. The shortness of the time (four days) in which the distance to Kaskaskia was covered from Phelps Prairie almost precludes the possibility of his having used the longer watershed route.
On the first day of July, then, the little army moved from near the present Bainbridge along a well-known trail which crossed Crab Orchard Creek at Greathouse Crossing[2] (section 2, township 9, range 1W)[3] and the Big Muddy at Marshall's Shoals, section 6, township 9, range 1W,
