author

Jacob Fowler

1765–1850

A frontier trader and diarist, he is remembered for the vivid journal he kept during an 1821–1822 expedition from Arkansas across the southern plains toward New Mexico. His writing offers a firsthand look at the landscapes, travel hardships, and borderlands of the early American West.

1 Audiobook

The Journal of Jacob Fowler

The Journal of Jacob Fowler

by Jacob Fowler

About the author

Best known for The Journal of Jacob Fowler, he recorded an expedition that left Fort Smith in 1821 and traveled along a route close to what later became part of the Santa Fe Trail. The journal was published long after his trip and remains valuable because it captures daily life on the trail in a direct, practical voice.

Records connected with northern Kentucky also place him in public life there, including service as a deputy sheriff in Campbell County in the 1790s. Those same records show that he enslaved people, an important part of his life and historical context that should not be left out.

Although not widely known today outside western history circles, his journal has lasted because it preserves an eyewitness account of a changing frontier at a key moment in the early 1820s.