The Travels, Explorations and Surveys of David Thompson (1770-1857)

An artist rendition of David Thompson

The story of David Thompson has been a fascination since childhood, and he seemed to come in and out of focus throughout my youth. He became a permanent fixture in my early twenties and has been ever since. The fascination with his exploration and travels has led to an interest in others who accomplished similar feats.

In 2002, as part of the David Thompson Bicentennial Partnership, a request was made to recalculate and verify the distances that Thompson traveled between the years 1785 and 1812; the time spent while engaged in the fur trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company. Joseph Tyrell in his editing of Tyrrell, Joseph (ed.). David Thompson’s Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784–1812, claimed that Thompson had travelled more than 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) however there was record of how the distance was calculated.

Spatial layers were created displaying his known movements between 1785 and 1812 and a distance recalculated utilizing a modern geographic information dataset; the results of which are displayed below.

Distances Traveled by David Thompson 1786-1812