Print this pageAbstract: History of Early Exploration in Great Basin
The challenge of Nevada began in 1827, when Jedediah Smith kept his time schedule and met his friends at the predetermined rendezvous point after having been gone a year. During that year he had crossed the middle of the Nevada unknown, an area that no white man had traversed. The collective search for the Rio de San Buenaventura, beaver, knowledge, and wealth had begun, and before 1860 the land had succumbed to the forays of such great men as Ogden, Walker, Fremont, Beckwith, and Simpson, and to the first geologic study by Henry Engleman and F. B. Meek. After the Civil War, the great surveys of the 40th Parallel by King and of the 100th Meridian by Wheeler helped mold and formulate the style for the many U.S. Geological Survey and private explorations that followed. The hallenge of Nevada is still with us and manifests itself in the quest for undiscovered hydrocarbons and minerals.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90964©1978 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah