Overland Explorations of the Trans-Mississippi West

<p> In 1528 the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions were shipwrecked and looking for help began an eight-year trek through the deserts of the American West. Over three centuries later the four Great Surveys in the United States were consolidated into the U.S. Geological Survey. </p><p> The frontiers were the lands near or beyond the recognized international national regional or tribal borders. Over the centuries they hosted a complicated series of international explorations of lands inhabited by American Indians Spanish French-Canadians British and Americans. These explorations were undertaken for wide-ranging reasons including geographical scientific artistic-literary and for the growth of the railroad. This history covers over 350 years of exploration of the West.</p><p></p>