Silvestre Vélez de Escalante

Silvestre Vélez de Escalante (* 1750 in Trenceño, Spain, † 1780 near Mexico City) was a Spanish Franciscan, who worked as a missionary and explorer in the southwest of the present United States in the 18th century.

Life

The active as a missionary Escalante made ​​trips through the Southwest, about which he wrote records. Under these trips, the survey carried out in 1776 Dominguez -Escalante expedition is the best known. Along with his superior Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, the cartographer Bernardo Miera y Pacheco and eight other travel companions left Escalante Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico, with the aim Monterey in California today, which it has mainly not reached. Rather, the group returned after they had moved to the southwest of present-day Colorado today Utah, back on today's Arizona to Santa Fe. During the trip she met, among others, on the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon and crossed the impassable El Malpais in present-day New Mexico. The expedition members were probably the first Europeans to reach Utah.

Eponym

After the Escalante Escalante River and the Escalante Desert in Utah and the city also located in Utah Escalante are named.

Swell

• Bolton, Herbert E. ( Ed. ): Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776 Including the diary and itinerary of Father Escalante. . Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City 1951.