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The earliest I can find, without really searching, is Merriwether Lewis. In 1801, he was asked by newly-elected President Thomas Jefferson to be his personal secretary. Lewis lived in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, D. C. (It's not exactly on the Atlantic, but it is less than 100 miles away.) In 1803, Lewis, selected to lead an expedition to what is soon to be called the Louisiana Purchase, leaves Washington to go to Philadelphia (again, very close to the Atlantic).
On July 4, 1803, the news of Louisiana Purchase announced. For $15 million, Jefferson more than doubles the size of United States: 820,000 square miles for 3 cents an acre. The next day, Lewis, just back from Philadelphia, leaves Washington.
Lewis supervises construction of a big keelboat (55 long, 8 feet wide, capable of carrying 10 tons of supplies) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then takes it down Ohio River, picking up William Clark, a friend from the miliatry, and some recruits along the way. Clark brings along York, a slave he has owned since childhood.
The expedition establishes Camp Wood (also called Camp Dubois) on east bank of Mississippi, upstream from St. Louis. More men recruited and trained. (This is now near or in the city of Woodriver, Illinois, about 12 miles north of where I live.) The two travel to St. Louis to attend ceremonies formally transferring Louisiana Territory from France to United States. (March 10, 1804) Clark returns to camp.
On May 14 the expedition sets off from Camp Dubois “under a jentle brease,” Clark writes. Lewis joins them a few days later. Following the Missouri River into what is now the state of Montana, the group travels up one of three forks in the river, and eventually reach the Continental Divide, and then Lemhi Pass, on the present-day border between Montana and Idaho. Lewis expects to see from the summit a vast plain to the west, with a large river flowing to the Pacific: the Northwest Passage that had been the goal of explorers since the time of Columbus. Instead, all he sees are more mountains. This is about August 12, 1805, over a year after they left Camp Wood, in Illinois. Lewis is the first known American to reach this point. On November 7, 1805, Lewis sees water in teh distance, and writes his most famous journal entry: “Ocian (sic) in view! O! the joy.” He was wrong. At the eastern end of Gray’s Bay, still 20 miles from sea. the group fights fierce Pacific storms, rolling waters, and high winds, which pin them down for nearly three weeks, but they finally see the Pacific. Clark calls three week period “the most disagreeable time I have experienced,” which is quite something, since they experienced a -40*F temperature in the last winter. Clark estimates they have traveled 4,162 miles from the mouth of the Missouri to the Pacific. He was off by about 40 miles. The group votes to decide where to make camp for teh winter, wityh Clark's slave getting a vote. The majority go across to the south side of the Columbi River, near what is now Astoria, Oregon, to build winter quarters. (Gizmogram lives in Astoria.)
If Lewis was, indeed, the first American to cross the COntinental Divide, then he, or one of his men, was the first American to travel coast-to-coast (allowing a little for not quite starting on the Atlantic).
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