page_title: Timeline of European exploration
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of European exploration / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph taken on 14 March 1895 as Nansen prepares to leave his ship Fram and begin his sledge journey to the North Pole.
context_page_description: This timeline of European exploration lists major geographic discoveries and other firsts credited to or involving Europeans during the Age of Discovery and the following centuries, between the years AD 1418 and 1957.
  Despite several significant transoceanic and transcontinental explorations by European civilizations in the preceding centuries, the precise geography of the Earth outside of Europe was largely unknown to Europeans before the 15th century, when technological advances as well as the rise of colonialism, mercantilism, and a host of other social, cultural, and economic changes made it possible to organize large-scale exploratory expeditions to uncharted parts of the globe.
  The Age of Discovery arguably began in the early 15th century with the rounding of the feared Cape Bojador and Portuguese exploration of the west coast of Africa, while in the last decade of the century the Spanish sent expeditions far across the Atlantic, where the Americas would eventually be discovered, and the Portuguese discovered a sea route to India.
context_section_description: 1800 – James Grant discovers the Australian coastline from Cape Banks to Cape Otway.
  c. 1801–04 – A fur trading post is built on Great Bear Lake.
  1802 – John Murray discovers Port Phillip Bay.
  1802 – Matthew Flinders explores the coast from Fowlers Bay to Encounter Bay, discovering Spencer Gulf, Kangaroo Island, and Gulf St. Vincent.
  1802 – Nicolas Baudin explores the coast from Cape Banks to Encounter Bay, where he meets Flinders.
  1802–03 – Flinders circumnavigates Australia.
  1805–06 – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, from Fort Mandan, ascend the Missouri to its headwaters, cross the Continental Divide via Lemhi Pass in the Bitterroot Range to enter the present state of Idaho, and descend the Clearwater and Snake rivers to the Columbia, which they descend to its mouth; on the way back Lewis explores the Blackfoot and Sun rivers, as well as the headwaters of the Marias, while Clark travels through Bozeman Pass and descends the Yellowstone to its confluence with the Missouri.
  1805–06 – Mungo Park descends the Niger as far as the Bussa rapids, where he is drowned.
  1806 – Yakov Sannikov discovers New Siberia Island.
  1806 – Abraham Bristow discovers the Auckland Islands.
  1808 – Simon Fraser descends the Fraser River for some 800 kilometres (500 mi) to its mouth, reaching the Strait of Georgia.
  1810 – Frederick Hasselborough discovers Campbell and Macquarie Islands.
  1811–12 – Wilson Price Hunt discovers Union Pass in the Wind River Range and reaches the upper Snake River, while Robert Stuart discovers South Pass—his route would later become the Oregon Trail.
  1816 – Otto von Kotzebue discovers Kotzebue Sound.
  1819 – William Smith discovers the South Shetland Islands.
  1819–20 – William Edward Parry enters Lancaster Sound and reaches Melville Island, discovering and naming Cornwallis, Bathurst, and Somerset Islands; the following year sights "Banks Land" (Banks Island).
  1820 – Edward Bransfield sights the Antarctic Peninsula; also discovers northernmost islands of the South Shetlands.
  1820–21 – Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen discovers the northernmost islands of the South Sandwich group; following year discovers Peter I and Alexander Islands.
  1821 – English naval officer John Franklin explores over 800 kilometres (500 mi) of coastline from the mouth of the Coppermine River to Point Turnagain on the Kent Peninsula.
  1821 – Sealers Nathaniel Palmer and George Powell discover "Powell's Islands" (South Orkney Islands).
  1821–23 – Parry explores the eastern side of the Melville Peninsula, reaching the western entrance of Fury and Hecla Strait; also explores the northern coast of Foxe Basin.
  1823 – Dixon Denham, Walter Oudney, and Hugh Clapperton are the first Europeans to sight Lake Chad.
  1823 – Sealer James Weddell sails to 74°15′S into "King George IV's Sea" (Weddell Sea).
  1824 – Samuel Black ascends the Finlay to Thutade Lake, source of the Finlay-Peace-Slave-Mackenzie river system, then portages to the Stikine and Turnagain.
  1824–25 – Étienne Provost, Jim Bridger, and Peter Skene Ogden independently reach the Great Salt Lake.
  1825–26 – Franklin explores the Arctic coastline from the mouth of the Mackenzie River west to Point Beechey, while his partner John Richardson explores east to the Coppermine River, naming Dolphin and Union Strait and discovering "Wollaston Land" (part of the southern coast of Victoria Island) — combining to chart over 1,930 kilometres (1,200 mi) of coastline; Richardson also surveys the five arms of Great Bear Lake.
  1826 – Frederick William Beechey charts the Alaskan coastline from Icy Cape to Point Barrow; also discovers Vanavana, Fangataufa, and Ahunui in the Tuamotu archipelago.
  1826 – Scottish explorer Alexander Gordon Laing becomes the first European to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu, but is murdered upon leaving the city.
  1827 – Jedediah Smith crosses the Sierra Nevada (via Ebbetts Pass) and the Great Basin.
  1828 – French explorer René Caillié is the first European to return alive from Timbuktu.
  1829–30 – John Ross discovers "Boothia Felix" (the Boothia Peninsula); the following year his neph
caption: Nansen and Johansen finally depart on their polar journey, 14 March 1895. Nansen is the tall figure, second from left; Johansen is standing second from right.
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