Local historical surveyors celebrated during National Surveyors Week

Since we are well into National Surveyors Week, observed from March 17-23, I thought it might be interesting to look at the exploits of a few of our county’s oldest historical surveyors. Capt. Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, of Fort Bonneville fame, is usually not thought of as a surveyor. Bonneville was in the area in the early 1830s, ostensibly to do some hunting and trapping, but there is evidence that the War Department (U.S. Army) had actually sent Bonneville to the Rocky Mountains to document the native situation and to do some mapping. It is that mapping that we are interested in, particularly his journal entries regarding an area in the Wind River Mountains.