Wednesday, October 10, 2007 Exploring Alaska: The Harriman Expedition Retraced An Illustrated Presentation By Robert McCracken Peck 4:00 - 7:00 PM Lecture at 5:30 PM In 1899, the railroad financier Edward H. Harriman invited many of America's leading scientists to join an elaborate, two-month expedition to Alaska, Siberia, and the Bering Sea. Among the distinguished passengers were John Muir, John Burroughs, Edward S. Curtis, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and William Healey Dall, an Honorary Professor of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Their travels and discoveries helped to create a baseline for our present knowledge of the flora, fauna, and native cultures of that remote part of the world.
Map of the route of the 1899 Harriman Alaskan Expedition. Click here for larger image.
In 2001, a group of eminent scholars retraced the Harriman route, observing a century of change and recording their findings for a documentary film that was broadcast on PBS in 2003 and a book that was published in 2004. Naturalist, historian, and photographer Robert Peck participated in the historic retracing of the 1899 expedition and provided commentary for the film. With spectacular slides of Alaska's scenery, people, wildlife, and historical images made of the same subjects 100 years ago, Mr. Peck will explain the significance of the two expeditions and describe the highlights of each. From the revival of Northern fur seal populations on the Pribilof Islands to the repatriation of cultural artifacts in Ketchikan and Cape Fox, he will provide a first-hand account of continuity and change in some of the most beautiful and forbidding places on earth. Robert McCracken Peck is Senior Fellow and Librarian at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He has served as the official chronicler of numerous expeditions around the world.
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