This Day…

1821 – William Becknell and his trading group arrive at Santa Fe, where they do a brisk trade with the Mexicans.  By mapping their route, they define what will be the Santa Fe Trail.  When they return to Franklin, Missouri, with their new-found riches, the trail will become well traveled.

1832 – The first Asiatic cholera epidemic occurs in the United States.  It appears in New Orleans, where 6,000 people perish in this two-week period.

1805-Alexander Baranof, the governor of Russian Alaska, sends the ship Juno to set up a post at the mouth of the Columbia River.  The attempt is frustrated by storms, and the ship take refuge in San Francisco Bay, thereby missing a possible encounter with the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

1889-Daily railroad service to the Pacific Coast is inaugurated by the Union Pacific railroad between Chicago and Portland, Oregon, and between Chicago and San Francisco.  The Far West is increasingly accessible.

Nine days away from the launch of the new website!

The new website debuts in twelve days!

New website will launch in two weeks.

He’s been gone ten years.  His murderers live on without a care.   

1804-The Lewis and Clark Expedition reaches the Mandan Indian towns on the Missouri River – the explorers have traveled 1600 miles in 23 weeks.  They set up winter quarters near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.

1802-Livingston writes to Jefferson that Joseph Bonaparte, brother of France’s First Consul, has casually inquired whether the United States would rather purchase East and West Florida – present day Florida and the southern parts of Alabama and Mississippi or Louisiana.  Livingston writes that, ‘I told him that there was no comparison in their value, but that we had no wish to extend our boundary across the Mississippi.’  However, Jefferson now begins to envision a continental United States.