author
Josiah Gregg
1806–1850
Best known for the classic frontier travel narrative Commerce of the Prairies, this merchant, explorer, and naturalist helped preserve one of the clearest firsthand pictures of the Santa Fe Trail and the Southwest in the early 1800s.
1 Audiobook
Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, 1831-1839, part 2
by Josiah Gregg
About the author
Born in Overton County, Tennessee, in 1806 and raised in Missouri, he worked as a teacher before turning to trade, travel, and observation on the expanding western frontier. Repeated journeys along the Santa Fe Trail gave him deep knowledge of New Mexico, the southern plains, and northern Mexico.
His lasting reputation rests on Commerce of the Prairies (1844), a lively account that blends travel writing, reporting, and practical detail. The book became an important early source on the Santa Fe trade and life in the Southwest, and it still stands out for its clear-eyed descriptions of landscape, commerce, and culture.
He was also an energetic naturalist, collecting plant specimens during his travels and later journeying west again during and after the Mexican-American War. He died in California in 1850, but his writing remains one of the most valuable firsthand records of the overland trade era.