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Rocky Mountain Expedition of 1862
In 1862, while the Civil War raged in the east, Dr. C.C. Parry and two assistants, Elihu Hall and J.P. Harbour, headed west under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture to explore the Rocky Mountains of the Colorado Territory.
Parry had been in the Rockies two years before and brought back a small but important collection of plants along with maps and observations on the geology and vegetation of the region. This year his goal was to complete his observations and to assemble a more complete collection of plants with the help of his assistants.
C.C. Parry
The expedition left Denver in June, heading southwest into the mountains. They reached the summit of Pike's Peak on July 1 and then moved on to Colorado Springs, stopping to collect along the way. At Colorado Springs, they turned north, back to Denver, where Hall and Harbour left to go to Omaha, Nebraska, and then back to their homes in Illinois. In only a few months, the expedition had collected over 700 specimens, in up to ten duplicate sets, which Hall and Harbour hauled back home to sort.
One set of specimens was sent to Asa Gray at Harvard University, then one of the leading botanists in the nation. Gray had studied Parry's specimens from the summer before and found many undescribed species. As Hall and Harbour organized their collections, Gray set to work identifying the specimens. In their collection, he was able to discover more than 30 new species, many of which he named for the collectors: including Penstemon harbourii, Juncus parryi, and Asclepias hallii. Hall, Harbour and Parry labeled the duplicates for distribution, but they soon quarreled about who was responsible for collecting which plants. Parry withdrew a portion of the set and distributed them with his own labels and numbers while Hall and Harbour sold the bulk of the specimens with labels that did not mention Parry.
Parry went on to visit the Rockies many times, though he never collected as many plants again. He became a promoter of western land and interests and surveyed through Utah, Nevada, and California as well as Colorado. Hall and Harbour returned to farming. Hall used the money from the specimens to build a house, and he continued to collect and sell plant specimens for a few years afterwards, but he gave it up because, as he explained to Gray, "I can make more money raising potatoes than collecting plants." He kept his scientific interests, however, and helped to found the Illinois Natural History Survey.
The holotypes for Gray's new species are at Harvard, as is the most complete set of specimens from the expedition. Parry's papers and herbarium went to Iowa State College (now University) where they are preserved. Many partial sets from the Hall and Harbour collections were sold, though probably no more than ten complete sets were ever made. In addition to the Brooklyn collection, there are significant collections at Duke University, the Hall Herbarium at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, the Field Museum, and Franklin and Marshall College.
References
Dr. William Weber has written a useful account of Parry's Colorado expeditions in King of Colorado Botany, Charles Christopher Parry, 1823-1890.
The scientific results of the 1862 expedition were published by Asa Gray in "Enumeration of the Species of Plants Collected by Dr. C.C. Parry and Messrs. Elihu Hall and J.P. Harbour, During the Summer of 1862, on and Near the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado Territory, lat. 39 - 41" in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 15: 55-80.
Hunter Dupree touches on the controversy surrounding the disposition of the collections in Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin.
Parry wrote an account of an earlier trip to the Rockies in "Physiographic Sketch of That Portion of the Rocky Mountain Range, at the Head Waters of South Clear Creek, and East of Middle Park: With an Enumeration of the Plants Collected in This District," published in American Journal of Science 33: 231-243, in 1862.