Westward Expansion’s Unsung Heroes

President Andrew Johnson got the ball rolling but let’s give thanks to the naturalists and botanists who helped drive Westward Expansion

Wagon at rest. Photo: Randy Hill at Unsplash

The story begins in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. The trouble is, nobody at the turn of the nineteenth century knew much about the 828,000 square miles of untamed wilderness the President had just bought from the French. Johnson wanted to know the lay of the land and commissioned four expeditions to fan out and record the plants, animal, and geology west of the Mississippi. It didn’t help matters that Alexander Mackenzie had already found a route over the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific Ocean ten years earlier, claiming the territory for the North West Company and the prospect of losing out to British or Spanish commercial interests added an extra sense of urgency to the President’s call.

Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery was actually the second of the four but history remembers it as being the most consequential because of the distance travelled and the hundreds of specimens they brought back. The 43-member Corps left St. Charles, Missouri on May 14, 1804 intending to follow the Missouri River as far as it would go and then somehow find the fabled Northwest Passage to the Pacific.