Vanguard of Expansion Army Engineers in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1819-1879

The reports of individual expeditions provided the basic source material for this study. Most of these narratives were published as government documents, which sit obscure and covered with dust in the stacks of major libraries. Some have been rescued from such concealment in modern, annotated editions. A few of the reports exist only in manuscript form and are contained in Record Group 77 at the National Archives, a valuable collection of correspondence and documents relating to the Corps. Also important is the private correspondence of participants in explorations, such as the papers of William H. Emory at Yale University.

In addition to these primary sources, there is a large body of literature on the explorers, mountainmen, and nineteenth century science, William H. Goetzmann's Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863, and Exploration and Empire, the Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West are invaluable. Also very useful is W. Turrentine Jackson's Wagon Roads West: A Study of Federal Road Surveys and Construction in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1846-1869, Readers who wish to read further on the role of the Corps in western expansion should consult these books and the footnotes at the end of the chapters of this narrative.