The Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College invites the public to the 2015 Duane Smith Lecture in Southwest Studies featuring this year’s guest speaker John L. Kessell. Kessell will give his presentation, “Whither the Waters: Mapping the Great Basin from Miera (1776) to Fremont (1845),” on Saturday, September 26th at 6:00 p.m. in the Fort Lewis College Vallecito Room.

John L. Kessell, professor emeritus of history at the University of New Mexico, specializes in colonial Southwestern history. He has received numerous awards for his scholarship and has published widely, including his latest book, "Miera Y Pacheco: A Renaissance Spainiard in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico" (University of Oklahoma Press, 2013).

Kessell’s presentation focuses on Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, who camped in August 1776 on the site of Durango during a 4-month-long, 1,700-mile vision quest around the Four Corners. His iconic map, first to portray the Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin, contained certain hydrographic misconceptions later embraced by the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, Henry Schenck Tanner, and others. Finally, John Charles Fremont figured out whither the waters really ran and whither they didn’t, tumbling Miera from cartographic signpost to historical artifact.

This lecture is free to the public. Parking on campus is free of charge on the weekends.