Warren Angus Ferris
Warren Angus Ferris (December 25, 1810 in Glens Falls, New York – February 8, 1873) was a trapper, cartographer and diarist in the Rocky Mountains from 1830 to 1835.[1] (Utley, pp.149-156) On one trip in 1834, Ferris acted as a clerk for the American Fur Company in a trapping party to the mountains of western Wyoming. Out of curiosity, Ferris found Indian guides and made a side journey into what is today Yellowstone National Park. In a journal that he kept during those years (but not published until 1940), Ferris gave one of the first descriptions of the geysers of the Yellowstone region.[2]
- From the surface of a rocky plain or table, burst forth columns of water of various dimensions, projected high in the air, accompanied by loud explosions, and sulphurous vapors, which were highly disagreeable to the smell. ...The largest of these wonderful fountains, projects a column of boiling water several feet in diameter, to the height of more than one hundred and fifty feet. ...These explosions and discharges occur at intervals of about two hours....[3] (Breining, p. 70)
Later in the 1830s, Ferris traveled to Texas where he became the official surveyor for Nacogdoches County. In 1839 Ferris surveyed at the Three Forks of the Trinity River deciding the lines and direction of streets for today's Dallas County. Ferris entered and surveyed this land prior to John Neely Bryan, the commonly accepted founder of Dallas. As payment for his surveying services, Ferris was granted the land upon which now lies most of downtown Dallas. At his death, no family members came forward to claim this land and it was then reclaimed by local government. Several of his descendants, many still in Texas, have attempted to regain legal possession of this valuable land, but all attempts have failed. This is inaccurate, at his death his children were run off the land and it was claimed by the state. Several attempts have been made to reclaim the land but we have been told there are no records to prove we ever owned it. -a descendant.
References
- ↑ Utley, R. M. (1997). A life wild and perilous: Mountain men and the paths to the Pacific. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 978-0-8050-3304-5
- ↑ Ferris, W. Angus. (1940). Life in the Rocky mountains: a diary of wanderings on the sources of the rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado from February, 1830, to November, 1835. Denver, Col.: F. A. Rosenstock, The Old West publishing company. Online at Hathitrust
- ↑ Breining, Greg, Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb beneath Yellowstone National Park (St. Paul, MN: Voyageur Press, 2007). Popularized scientific look at the Yellowstone area's geological and historical past and potential future. ISBN 978-0-7603-2925-2
- Pederson, Lyman C., Jr. "Warren Angus Ferris", featured in "Trappers of the Far West", Leroy R. Hafen, editor. 1972, Arthur H. Clark Company, reprint University of Nebraska Press, October 1983. ISBN 0-8032-7218-9
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