As part of an online project about the history and archaeology of the San Luis Valley, the San Luis Valley Rural Telecommunications Project provides an overview of the fourth expedition that was undertaken by the American explorer John Charles Fremont (1813-1890). In the winter of 1848, Fremont led an expedition through the San Juan Mountains to locate a route for a railroad to California. When the group reached present day Del Norte, California, severe weather conditions forced an end to the expedition.

With Diaries, Letters, And Reports By Participants In The Tragedy. Far West And The Rockies Historical Series, 1820-1875, V11.

A brief biography of the man who helped open the way west to California and was later elected as a United States Senator from that state.

Interpretive biography of Frâemont covering his important exploring expeditions, adventures in California, political activities and presidential candidacy, and fraudulent business dealings and scandals. Fremont's explorations provided the routes west for the growing America.

“The most eloquent, understanding, and yet very candid biography of Frémont that has appeared to date”—Howard R. Lamar, Yale University The career of John Charles Frémont (1813–90) ties together the full breadth of American expansionism from its eighteenth-century origins through its culmination in the Gilded Age. Tom Chaffin's biography demonstrates Frémont's vital importance to the history of American empire, and illuminates his role in shattering long-held myths about the ecology and habitability of the American West. As the most celebrated American explorer and mapper of his time, Frémont stood at the center of the vast federal project of western exploration and conquest. His expeditions between 1838 and 1854 captured the public's imagination, inspired Americans to accept their nation's destiny as a vast continental empire, and earned him his enduring sobriquet, the Pathfinder. But Frémont was more than an explorer. Chaffin's dramatic narrative includes Frémont's varied experiences as an entrepreneur, abolitionist, Civil War general, husband to the remarkable Jessie Benton Frémont, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and Gilded Age aristocrat. This new paperback edition of Pathfinder features a new, additional, updated introduction by the author.