Location
John Milton Bigelow
Topics
Description
From 1850 through 1853, John Milton Bigelow served as a physician and botanist (together with Parry, Schott, and Thurber) on the Bartlett/Graham/Emory survey of the United States / Mexico boundary, bringing him to the Rio Grande borderlands. During these travels, he discovered the Bigelow oak and guayule, and collaborated on the 1857 report, Botany of the Border. Bigelow also was the botanist on the Whipple expedition in 1853-54 to discover a rail route along the 35th parallel, to run from the Mississippi to the Pacific. This journey took him across the Texas Panhandle, along the Canadian River, studying cacti, juniper, and cottonwoods, and pioneering phytogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of plants. Bigelow is celebrated for establishing a botanical baseline in west and north Texas, before extensive development.
Location Notes
A sign at the San Felipe Spring in Del Rio could make sense, since it was the site of a major camp for Bigelow during the Border Survey, and the locale for his documentation of cienega vegetation. There is a parking lot at the public San Felipe Natural Spring Park that could work well as a sign site.
Files
- John Bigelow, Correspondence with John Torry, Asa Gray, etc. (1840-65)
- John Bigelow, Botanical Profile of Forest Trees, Fort Smith to San Pedro (1853-54)
- William Emory, Report on the U.S. and Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. 1 (1857)
- William Emory, Report on the U.S. & Mexican Boundary Survey, Vol. 2 (1859)