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In 1804, Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Missouri River in the northern part of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, as well as any such watercourses that led to the Pacific Ocean. Their collections of plants and animals, although valuable, were made without a scientific staff. Three other explorations in the Louisiana Territory would follow within the next three years. Not until 1820 would there come an expedition more scientifically oriented and better-staffed for the purpose of inventorying a portion of the trans-Mississippi West than any previous expedition had been. This was the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains. The botanist who accompanied that expedition, Edwin James, M.D., returned with hundreds of plant specimens, well over one hundred of which were previously unknown.
In Retracing Major Stephen H. Long's 1820 Expedition, George J. Goodman and Cheryl A. Lawson give a day-by-day account of the route of the expedition and locate the position of each night's campsite. The expedition is followed along all fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred miles of its journey, from its outset on June 6, 1820, at Engineer Cantonment to its conclusion at Fort Smith on September 13, 1820.
To accomplish this remarkable task, Goodman and Lawson themselves covered a distance of more than ten thousand miles over a period of sixty days, traveling through Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. During that time they consulted 347 topographic maps. They checked the geological features described by James, and they collected many plants as near as possible to the collection sites of 1820.
The second part of this volume presents the only comprehensive, species-by-species study of the botanical specimens brought back by James. Each specimen is fully identified, and its time and place of collection are discussed and fully referenced to the diaries and journals kept by the explorers during their expedition.
Retracing Major Stephen H. Long's 1820 Expedition is a painstakingly thorough work that answers many questions about the route of the historic Long Expedition. It presents, for the first time, a complete account of the botanical contributions made by Edwin James in the Louisiana Territory.
