Quebec-born Peter Skene Ogden, who explored and gathered beaver pelts in Oregon between 1826 and 1827, was more than a fur trader. The Hudson’s Bay Company sent him as chief trader on several expeditions between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. His mission was not only to gather furs, but also to explore and record the rivers and mountains he encountered. Historian Jeff LaLande calls his contribution to geographic knowledge of “major importance to Oregon history.”
LaLande notes that Ogden recorded for the first time the Klamath River and Mount Shasta, which he called Sastise; traced the drainage systems of Southwest Oregon, Northern California and Central and Southeastern Oregon; made the first crossing of the Siskiyou Pass; and explored the Rogue and Umpqua rivers.
The expedition faced many hardships, which a dispirited Ogden acknowledged in a journal entry in June 1827 near Goose Lake, Calif. He wrote, “… this is certainly a most horrid life in a word I may say without exaggeration Man in this Country is deprived of every comfort that can tend to make existence desirable.”
Ogden never became a U.S. citizen, but is buried in Oregon City’s Mountain View Cemetery.
Sources: Williams, Glyndwr. "Ogden, Peter Skene." Dictionary of Canadian Biography. University of Toronto, 1985. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ogden_peter_skene_8E.html; LaLande, Jeff. "Peter Skene Ogden (1790-1854)." The Oregon Encyclopedia. Portland State University and Oregon Historical Society, 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/ogden_peter_skene/#.Vie3vMuFNPY; Elliott, T C. "The Peter Skene Ogden Journals." Oregon Historical Quarterly (2010). Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
