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Fremont Expedition: Mystery solved at Capitol Reef
by Lee Kruetzer, CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK ARCHAEOT.OGIST
Professional historians do not always have the satisfaction of being first to solve a historical mystery.The unlikely team of a self-taught daguerreotypist and the orchard manager at Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah outshined this historian when they pieced together a 145-year-old puzzle recently.
For years Robert Shlaer, a research associate at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, has been reading old daguerreotype manuals from the 1840s and perfecting his skills at producing images on polished, silver-coated copper plate "negatives," a 19th-century form of photography. While looking through a book of original and recently re-shot photographs from old expeditions, Shlaer realized that John C. Fremont's last explorations could be the prime subject for another book of this genre.
Fremont pushed his hardy band of men through Colorado and Utah during the winter of 1853-54, seeking a northern railroad route to the Pacific Ocean. Such a route would divert the railroad supply lines and associated economic benefits from southern and southwestern states championing the cause of slavery, which Fremont vigorously opposed. To help him argue his case, the Pathfinder (as Fremont was known) hired young daguerreotypist Solomon Nunes Carvalho to accompany and chronicle the explorations.
The expedition was difficult, ending with the starving band eating their horses before stumbling half-frozen into the Mormon settlement of Parowan. Before caching his heavy equipment somewhere near present-day Loa or Fremont, Carvalho made perhaps 300 daguerreotypes along their route. Unfortunately, his plates were lost in a fire years after the expedition, and all that remains of Carvalho's work are approximately 16 engravings based on the original images, created for Fremont's expedition report.
Fremont, however, never wrote that report. The details of his route are pieced together mostly from notes, including Carvalho's own, and from the enigmatic engravings.
Shlaer, hoping to re-daguerreotype the depicted images for his proposed book, set about to identify and locate those sites. Suspecting that at least one of the engravings was set in Capitol Reef, he sent photocopies of the engravings to the park. There, Orchard Manager Kent Jackson identified the engraving depicting three eerie obelisks amid swirling snow as the North District formation known to his family as "Mom, Pop and Henry."
Jackson took Shlaer into the backcountry to view the features, which the delighted daguerreotypist immediately confirmed to be Fremont's long-lost site. Except for a fantasy foreground camping scene created by artists for the engraving, the old illustration was an exact match to Jackson's family of sandstone formations.
Exact, that is, when the illustration is flipped. According to Shlaer, it was Jackson who first wondered whether the images had been reversed at some point in production. The idea had not occurred to Shlaer, who immediately realized that Jackson was correct: daguerreotypes are mirror images of the original subject, and the engravers evidently had failed to make the customary adjustments.
Armed with knowledge of the image reversal, Shlaer followed his hunches into
Answers help identify explorer's route through Utah. nearby Goblin Valley State Park and identified Wild Horse Butte as the second of the elusive landmarks he had been seeking.
These discoveries place John C. Fremont's final expedition directly through Capitol Reef National Park and into western Wayne County. While some historians had suspected that his route had been through this area, none had been able to demonstrate it so clearly as have Shlaer and Jackson.
A National Park Service metal detector survey in the area has yielded nothing belonging either to the expedition or to that era. It is likely that only Carvalho approached the landmark while the remainder of the team proceeded on at a distance. The camping scene, says Shlaer, was probably invented by artists years after the expedition, possibly to indicate scale or to liven up the landscape.
Shlaer, assisted by grants from the Utah Humanities Council and the Avenir Foundation of Colorado, is now producing a
Above: This engraving is a reproduction of Carvalho's original daguerreotype image taken in Capitol Reef's North District. The camp scene was probably added later either to give perspective or just to enliven the image. Bottom Left: "Mom, Pop and Henry" in a photograph taken in 1995, when the mystery was unlocked.
Reproduced by permission Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
new set of daguerreotypes recreating Carvalho's original images. He plans to publish his work in a book and to create a traveling exhibit for display in small museums throughout Colorado, Kansas and Utah, including the Capitol Reef Visitor Center.
Sadly, Kent Jackson died at his home in Fremont on Nov. 5, 1995, a few months after helping Shlaer solve the Fremont mystery. Jackson was a history buff and an archaeologist, having grad-
uated with a bachelor's degree in archaeology from Brigham Young University. He grew up working in Capitol Reef's orchards alongside his father, Worthen Jackson, and was orchard manager for 20 years. His knowledge of the community and its history were integral to the research that helped establish the Fruita Rural Historic Landscape in the area around park headquarters. Designation of this historic landscape and documentation of other archaeological and historic sites in the park, such as the Fremont "camp site," are part of a multi-year effort to identify, preserve and interpret the park's cultural resources.
