About This Stamp
To commemorate the bicentennial of the official launch of the Lewis and Clark expedition on May 14, 1804, a special 32-page prestige booklet, Lewis & Clark: The Corps of Discovery, 1804–1806 and a 37-cent Lewis & Clark Bicentennial commemorative stamp were issued on May 14, 2004, in the following cities: Astoria, Oregon; Atchison, Kansas; Great Falls, Montana; Hartford, Illinois; Ilwaco, Washington; Orofino, Idaho; Omaha, Nebraska; Pierre, South Dakota; Sioux City, Iowa; St. Charles, Missouri; Washburn, North Dakota.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery on a heroic expedition from the mouth of the Missouri River near St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. President Thomas Jefferson had instructed them to follow the Missouri and Columbia Rivers and locate the elusive Northwest Passage.
Along the way, they explored much of the territory of "Louisiana," the vast uncharted wilderness west of the Mississippi River that the United States had recently purchased from France. They mapped rivers; collected plants and animals new to science; held councils with Indians; and kept detailed journals — books destined to become classics of both American history and American literature.
The booklet contains two semi-jumbo stamp designs in self-adhesive panes of 10. The stamps feature individual portraits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark painted by Michael J. Deas in a style reminiscent of early 19th-century portraits of the two explorers. The text was written by Ron Fisher, a Lewis and Clark enthusiast who has visited many of the expedition's sites and first wrote about the Corps of Discovery in 1970. Fisher's article, "Lewis and Clark: Naturalist-Explorers," appeared in the October 1998 issue of National Geographic.
The commemorative stamp, designed and painted by Michael J. Deas, depicts Meriwether Lewis and William Clark standing on a promontory surveying the countryside.
Stamp Art Director
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Michael J. Deas
Michael J. Deas, an award-winning illustrator and master realist artist, was raised in suburban New Orleans and Long Island, New York. Although he took art classes as a young man, paying for them by working as an illustrator of novels and children’s books, he considers himself to be essentially self-taught.
For more than 25 years, Deas has created stamp images for the Postal Service™. His 1995 portrait of Marilyn Monroe was one of the top selling commemorative stamps ever. Since then, he has created 20 other portraits for stamps, among them Thomas Wolfe (2000), Audrey Hepburn (2003), Ronald Reagan (2005), Edgar Allan Poe (2009), George H.W. Bush (2019), and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2023). His most recent stamp projects include portraits of Benjamin Franklin, Bernardo de Gálvez, and Thomas Jefferson for the 2026 Figures of the American Revolution stamp pane.
The Society of Illustrators has recognized his works with five gold medals and two silver. Two of the gold medals were awarded for stamp designs: James Dean (Legends of Hollywood, 1996), and Thornton Wilder (Literary Arts, 1997). In 2004, Deas received the Hamilton King Award, given for the single best illustration of the year.
In 2012–13, 40 of his original paintings, drawings, and illustrations were the subject of a solo exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. In the late 90s, Deas was one of seven artists whose works were featured in “Visual Solutions — Seven Illustrators and the Creative Process,” at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
In addition to his artwork, Deas is a noted authority on Edgar Allan Poe. His 1989 book, The Portraits & Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe, documents more than 70 historic images of the poet and is now considered a standard reference work.
Over the years, clients have included TIME magazine (six covers), Columbia Pictures (redesign of the well known lady with a torch logo), Reader’s Digest, Random House, HarperCollins, Sports Illustrated, as well as a number of prominent advertising agencies.
Today, Deas works from his studio in the historic district of New Orleans.