The Travels, Explorations and Surveys of David Thompson between 1785-1812

An artist rendition of David Thompson

David Thompson (1770–1857) was a British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and map-maker. Thompson enjoyed excellent relations with the First Nations. He spoke at least four Indigenous languages (Blackfoot, Kootenay, Chipewyan and Mandan) and compiled a number of dictionaries. Over Thompson’s career, he travelled the breadth of north western North America. Thompson’s significance as a geographer and mapmaker cannot be underestimated. Not only was he the first to chart vast regions of the continent, but his work remained the basis of all maps of the west for almost a century. The same meticulous observational skills that made him a superb surveyor also made him an excellent naturalist. His journals are full of acute accounts of the plants, animals and birds he encountered.

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.

Linear and point datasets were created to encompassed Thompson’s explorations and travels and were researched from Thompson’s unpublished journals and other numerous records. From this data a measurement was calculated, the results of which are below. The linear data contains the attributes Year, Route, Leg, Departed, Arrived, Origin, and Destination. The point data contains the attributes Point Type, Date, Notes, Year, and Route.

Distances Traveled by David Thompson 1786-1812