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| John Charles Fremont had an extremely varied life. Born in 1813, he would
become a leader of western mapping expeditions, a major figure in the U.S. takeover of
California (and returned to Washington, D.C. for court martial), a financial
speculator, U.S. senator, the Republican Party's first presidential candidate, and
a Civil War general. While called "the Pathfinder," Fremont
usually surveyed established routes. Before the age of specialists, he
served as chief scientist with roles: astronomer, botanist, geologist, and
meteorologist. He saw more of the west than others of his generation,
and his expedition reports, written with his wife, Jessie Benton Fremont,
described the west to an expanding U.S. population. The report of his 1842
expedition caught the nation in the midst of "Oregon fever". His
report of the 1843-44 expedition contained detailed maps of the Oregon
Trail. Fremont named many locations,
including the Humboldt River, and the Golden Gate, and in turn others used
his name for counties, cities, mountains, and rivers. |
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Fremont's five major expeditions include the following:
 | In 1842, he led an expedition that mapped much of the Oregon Trail route
to South Pass, and then proceeded on to the Wind River Range, and then
returned to Westport, Missouri. |
| In 1843-44, he again crossed South Pass and continued on much of the
Oregon Trail route to the Dalles Mission on the Columbia River. He then headed
south to the eastside of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and then made a winter
crossing of Carson Pass in deep snow to reach Sutter's Fort near Sacramento,
California. He went down the central valley of California, and turned east,
returning through present-day Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and
Kansas to Westport. |
| In 1845, he headed west out of Westport, and traveled down the Humboldt
River, later a part of the California Trail, and crossed the Sierra Nevada at
what would be later called Donner Pass. |
| His 1848-9 expedition sought to locate a route across the Rocky Mountains
that could be used all year. They found disaster in the winter snow
of the southern Rockies. |
| In 1853-54, he followed the route of his previous expedition, with some
corrections, and was able to continue to California. Solomon Nunes Carvalho
provided the first western expedition with photographic documentation. |
Late in their lives Jessie Benton Fremont wrote to her husband,
"All your campfires have become cities." In 1887, Collis Huntington, President
of the Central and Southern Pacific railroads, told Fremont:
"...our road goes over your buried campfires and climbs many a grade you jogged
over on a mule..." Fremont died in 1890.
Arctic explorer Adolphus Greely summarized Fremont's contributions in 1893:
"In few instances did it fall to Fremont's lot to
first explore any section of the country, but it was his good fortune, as it was
his intent, to first contribute systematic, extended, and reliable data as to
climate, elevation, physical condition, and geographical positions."
Current image galleries do not yet completely cover any of his expeditions.
Source: Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles
Fremont and the Course of American Empire, Hill and Wang, New York, 2002.
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David Lincoln. All rights reserved. Images
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