author
Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville
1796–1878
An Army officer, fur trader, and explorer of the American West, he became closely tied to the early story of the Oregon Trail. His travels through the Rockies, Great Basin, and Pacific Northwest helped shape how many Americans imagined the frontier.
1 Audiobook
The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West
by Washington Irving, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville
About the author
Born in Paris in 1796, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville moved to the United States as a child and graduated from West Point in 1815. He built a career in the U.S. Army, but he is best remembered for the long western expedition he led in the early 1830s.
Traveling with a company of trappers and traders, he explored parts of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the Oregon Country. Accounts of those journeys were later popularized by Washington Irving, which helped turn Bonneville into a well-known frontier figure.
Modern histories note that his reputation has been both celebrated and reconsidered over time, but his place in the story of western exploration remains important. He died in 1878 after a long military life that connected formal army service with the restless world of early overland exploration.