Long's Peak, Colorado

Stephen Harriman Long

Stephen Harriman Long, born December 30, 1784 - He died in Alton, Illinois on September, 4th 1864. Long was a U.S. engineer, explorer, and military officer. As an engineer he is remembered for his developments in the design of steam locomotives. As an Army officer, he led one of the early pioneering expeditions through a large portion of the Great Plains. It was in this widely distributed report in which he described the great plains as the "Great American Desert". Longs Peak, the "crown jewel" of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is named for him.

Long was born in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, the son of Moses and Lucy (Harriman) Long. He received an A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1809 and an A.M. from Dartmouth in 1812. In 1814, he was commissioned a lieutenant of engineers in the United States Army. In March 1819 he married Martha Hodgkins of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The following month, as a brevet major in the U.S. Army, he was appointed to lead an expedition through the American West, to explore areas acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. The specific purpose was to the find the sources of the Platte, Arkansas, and Red rivers.

After the expedition, he spent several years helping to survey and build the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In 1826 he received his first patent for his work on railroad steam locomotives. Long received many more patents for locomotive design and worked with other Army engineers in planning and building the railroad.

In 1832, along with William Norris and several other business partners, he formed the American Steam Carriage Company. The business was dissolved in 1834 due to the difficulties in placing Long's locomotive designs into production.

Major Long was the leader of the first scientific exploration up the Platte River. His party included several scientists who studied the geography and natural resources of the area. Eventually, Long became one of the most prolific explorers of the period, covering 26,000 miles in five expeditions.

Like most engineers, Long was college-trained, interested in searching for order in the natural world, and willing to work with the modern technology of the time.

His first expedition was, by some accounts, his most famous. In July 1819, he joined Gen. Henry Atkinson's Yellowstone Expedition bound from St. Louis to the Rockies on the steamboat Western Engineer. This was the first steamboat to travel up the Missouri River into the Louisiana Purchase territory. By September 17, the steamboat arrived at Fort Lisa, a trading fort belonging to William Clark's Missouri Fur Company. It was about five miles south of Council Bluffs. Long's group built their winter quarters nearby and called it "Engineer Cantonment."

Within a month, Long returned to the east coast, and by the following May, his orders had changed. Instead of exploring the Missouri River, President James Madison decided to have Long lead an expedition up the Platte to the mountains and back along the border with the Spanish colonies. Exploring that border was vital, since John Quincy Adams had just concluded the treaty with Spain, which drew a new U. S. border to the Pacific.

On June 6, 1820, Long and 19 men traveled up the north bank of the Platte and met Pawnee and Otoe Indians. On October 14, 1820, 400 Omaha gathered at a meeting or "council", Long reported that Chief Big Elk made the following speech:

"Here I am, my Father; all these young people you see around here are yours; although they are poor and little, yet they are your children. All my nation loves the whites and always have loved them. Some think, my Father, that you have brought all these soldiers here to take our land from us but I do not believe it. For although I am a poor simple Indian, I know that this land will not suit your farmers. If I even thought your hearts bad enough to take this land, I would not fear it, as I know there is not wood enough on it for the use of the white."

After finding and naming Longs Peak and the Rocky Mountains, they journeyed up the South Platte River crossing over to the Arkansas River watershed. The expedition was the split, and Long led his group towards the Red River. They missed it, ran into hostile Indians, probably Utes, and had to eventually eat their own horses to survive before they finally met the other part of the expedition at Belle Point in what is now western Oklahoma. Long and his party of scientists learned much to tell the nation and had the opportunity to show the U.S. flag to the Spanish residents.

In his report of the 1820 expedition, Long wrote that the Plains from Nebraska to Oklahoma were "unfit for cultivation and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture." On the map he made of his explorations, he called the area a "Great Desert."

Long felt the area labeled the "Great Desert" would be better suited as a buffer against the Spanish, British, and Russians, who shared the continent with America. He also commented that the eastern wooded portion of the country should be filled up before the republic attempted any further extension westward. He commented that sending settlers to that area was out of the question. Given the technology of the 1820s, Long was right. There was little timber for houses or fuel, minimal surface water, sandy soil, hard winters, vast herds of buffalo, hostile Indians, and no easy means of communication. It is ironic to note that native tribes and Spanish pioneers had been living there for centuries and that, by the end of the 19th century, the "Great Desert" had become the nation's breadbasket.