Frémont's "Snow Mountain"
A few of the peak illustrations 1856-1900
I sprang upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me to an immense snow field five hundred feet below...We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze where never flag waved before.
Frémont
All of the following images are invention.
There is only one authentic contemporary image of Fremont Peak. It was drawn on site by Frémont's cartographer Charles Preuss and was published with Frémont's government report in 1843.
The first four illustrations are from 1856 presidential election campaign biographies and literature. This one, from Smuckers' Life, is of a not very inspiring sort of lump of a peak. What appears to be a game of rock-paper-scissors going on on the sidelines looks more exciting. Ho, hum.
Smucker, Samuel M, A. M., The Life of Col. John Charles Frémont and His Narrative of Explorations and Adventures in Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon and California, Miller, Orton & Mulligan, New York, 1856.
But later versions show lofty needle-like spires--a lot more romantic--and are accompanied with a lot of hat-waving and, one assumes, hurrahing and fireing of guns. They set the stage for other later commercial views
Upham, Charles Wentworth, Life, Exploration and Public Services of John Charles Frémont, Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1856.
Bigelow, John, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of John Charles Frémont, Derby & Jackson, New York, 1856.
Part of a political cartoon published by N. Currier, 1856 presidential campaign
FREE SOIL, FREE SPEECH, FREE PRESS, FREE MEN & FREMONTThe name Frémont! does have quite a ring to it.
Baker & Godwin
Campaign poster
New York: 1856
Francis C. Woodworth , The Young American's Life of Frémont
Miller Orton & Mulligan, NY
1856
Greeley (Horace) and McElrath, Life of Frémont, New York, 1856
c.1890
With the unfurling of Frémonts flag, "Destiny's screaming eagle had replaced the fabled god Terminus so often referred to by Senator Thomas Hart Benton in his public addresses. William H. Geotzmann 
c.1856
Up, men! he [Frémont] cried,
yon rocky cone.
John Greenleaf Whittier
Greely, A. W., Men of Achievement, Charles Scribner's Sons,New York, 1893
Undated pencil sketch
Civil War envelope cover.
U. S. Post Office 1898
A Cigar Box label (embossed)
F. Heppenheimer's Sons, NY., © 1898 by American Lithographic Co.
N. C. Wyeth
for Charles Scribner's Sons, c.1940.1944 wall calendar "Flags In America's History" with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth was made to advertise John Morrell and Company of Ottumwa, Iowa. This is from the month of October. The painting is in the U. S. Naval Academy Museom
See another picture that isn't Frémont
Another commemorative stamp and a rather silly looking 1st Day Cover 1994
Oops! NOT John Charles Frémont. Flag waving in the breeze; sword drawn--apparently a popular theme in 19C merchandising.
"I sprang upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me into an immense snow-field five hundred feet below....and, fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze where never flag waved before."
Fremont Peak, WY.
Frémont, 1842"I fancied I could see Frémont's men hauling the cannon up the battlements of the Rocky Mountains, flags in the air, Frémont at the head, waving his sword, and unknown and unnamed empires at every hand."
Joaquin Miller"[K] had succeeded in climbing [the wall] with astonishing ease...with a flag clamped in his teeth. Stones were still rattling down under his feet. He stuck the flag in; it flew in the wind."
Franz Kafka, 1930 Recollection of a Churchyard WallNever before had anyone attempted to measure the altitude of an American mountain with a barometer. William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration of the American West.
Real Peak illustrations 1843 and 1845 These are the only two plates that were published in the official government printings of Frémont's Report in 1843, and in 1845. They were made from field drawings by expedition cartographer Charles Preuss. The two view overlap and are arranged here as a panorama of the range.
See the positions from where these two drawings were made.
The image below was rendered from USGS 7.5' DEM files using MacDEM and POV-Ray.
The celebrated American portraitist G. P. A. Healy painted the 29 year old 2nd Lieutenant Frémont against the backdrop of the Wind River Range as rendered onsite by Frémont's expedition artist and cartographer Charles Preuss. Jackson Peak is shown over his right shoulder and Island Lake at his right elbow.
Frémont wrote in his expedition Report that "The summit rock was gneiss, succeeded by sienitic gneiss. Sienite and feldspar succeeded in our descent to the snow line, where we found feldspathic granite."The object of the climb was not to bag a peak, but to measure the peak.
The height of the Rocky mountains has been previously estimated at from 10,000' to 27,000'."Never before had anyone attempted to measure the Altitude of an American mountain with a barometer." William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration of the American West.
This was cutting edge science! And Frémont's barometrical observations were accurate and are perfectly valid data today.
 ©1999, 2007 Bob Graham |
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