The Lewis and Clark Expedition returned to Seaside last weekend. The annual event, presented by the Pacific Northwest Living Historians and the Seaside Museum & Historical Society, paid tribute to the men who came to Seaside in the winter of 1805-06 to boil salt for the journey back.

The region’s burn ban prohibited fires on the beach at Avenue U, so the process of salt-making was kept on hold this year.

Mark Johnson represented George Gibson, a private from Kentucky.

Johnson, who lives in Portland, explained the last significance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. “It’s just such a wide, all-encompassing thing,” Johnson said. “We’re exploring new territory. We’re tasked with getting not only geographical information — because they wanted to find Northwest Passage — but we’re tasked with getting scientific information, finding new flora and fauna, commerce and making contacts with key men of the tribes across the Plains and establishing relations.”

Reenactor Dewayne Pritchett played a hunter in the expedition, John Collins.

When he’s out of costume, Pritchett is a retired history teacher from Richfield, Washington. He’s been joining the reenactors since 2009.

Collins, from Frederick County, Maryland, found life in the East “really kind of boring,” Pritchett said. “This was an opportunity for him.”

Historian John Fisher, portrayed Charles Floyd, a surgeon who traveled with the expedition and died of appendicitis on the trip.

The abundant written record of the expedition was the product of seven writers, traveling, Johnson said, assigned by President Thomas Jefferson.

“The orders were to have the sergeants also take daily notes to augment them and then copy the notes,” he said. “If anything was lost, they’d have a copy. They took such copious notes, over a million words written on parchment with quill. Social, scientific — everything is there.”