These are just three of the almost three dozen California taxa named for mapmaker and plant collector John Charles Fremont (1813-1890). Called "the Pathfinder," he explored and surveyed much of the Oregon Trail to the mouth of the Columbia River, and the Great Salt Lake area about which not a great deal was known. He fought in the Mexican War, became one of California's first two Senators, and then in 1856 the first Republican presidential candidate. After several turbulent and mostly unsuccessful military assignments during the Civil War, further political activity, and a failed bid to establish a southern transcontinental railroad route, he was appointed governor of the Territory of Arizona. He contributed greatly to geography and named the Great Basin, of which he was the first to appreciate the immensity and the fact that it had no outlet to the sea. Despite his apparent accomplishments, were it not for his network of connections and his knack for political expediency, he probably would have been a failure many times over. He had little moral sense and allowed greed and ambition to rule him. A line from an L.A. Times review of a new biography of Fremont seems to sum him up admirably: "He turned golden promise into the dross of failure." |
