Stephen Harriman Long Stephen Harriman Long ( December 30 , 1784 – September 4 , 1864 ) was a U . S . army explorer , topographical engineer , and railway engineer . As an inventor , he is noted for his developments in the design of steam locomotives . He was also one of the most prolific explorers of the early 1800s , although his career as an explorer was relatively short - lived . He covered over 26 , 000 miles in five expeditions , including a scientific expedition in the Great Plains area , which he famously described as a " Great Desert " ( leading to the term " the Great American Desert " ) . Biography . Long was born in Hopkinton , New Hampshire , the son of Moses and Lucy ( Harriman ) Long . He received an A . B . from Dartmouth College in 1809 and an A . M . from Dartmouth in 1812 . In 1814 , he was commissioned a lieutenant of engineers in the U . S . Army Corps of Engineers . Upon the reorganization of the Army in 1816 , he was appointed a Major on 16 April and assigned to the Southern Division under Maj . Gen . Andrew Jackson as a topographical engineer . In 1817 , Major Long headed a military excursion up the Mississippi River to the Falls of St . Anthony near the confluence with the Minnesota River . As a result of his recommendations , the Army established Fort Snelling to guard against Indian incursions against settlers in the Upper Mississippi Valley . Long recorded his experiences of the expedition in " Voyage in a Six - oared Skiff to the Falls of St . Anthony " , in 1860 . In March 1819 he married Martha Hodgkiss of Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , the sister of Isabella Hodgkiss Norvell , wife of US Senator John Norvell . Soon afterwards he led the scientific contingent of the 1819 Yellowstone Expedition to explore the Missouri River . In 1820 he was appointed to lead an alternative expedition through the American West , exploring areas acquired in the Louisiana Purchase . The specific purpose of the voyage was to find the sources of the Platte , Arkansas , and Red rivers . Later , in 1823 he led additional military expeditions into the United States borderlands with Canada , exploring the Upper Mississippi Valley , the Minnesota River , the Red River of the North and across the southern part of Canada . During this time he determined the northern boundary at the 49th parallel at Pembina . Following his official military expeditions , Major Long spent several years on detached duty as a consulting engineer with various railroads . Initially he helped to survey and build the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad . In 1826 he received his first patent for his work on railroad steam locomotives . Long received many more patents for locomotive design and worked with other Army engineers in planning and building the railroad . In 1832 , along with William Norris and several other business partners , he formed the American Steam Carriage Company . The business was dissolved in 1834 due to the difficulties in placing Long ' s locomotive designs into production . From June to November , 1836 , Long led two parties of about 15 each to conduct a survey of a route inland from the shores of the Penobscot Bay at Belfast , Maine to Quebec for the proposed Belfast & Quebec Railroad which had been chartered by the State of Maine on March 6 , 1836 . In his report to Governor Robert P . Dunlap of Maine , Col . Long recommended a route into Quebec of 227 miles from " Belfast to the Forks of the Kennebec , and by a line of levels thence to the Canadian line . " However a then provision in the Maine Constitution which prohibited public loans for purposes such as building railroads as well as the financial panic of 1837 intervened to kill the project . Colonel Long received a leave of absence to work on the newly incorporated Western & Atlantic Railroad in Georgia . His yearly salary was established at $ 5 , 000 , the contract was signed May 12 , 1837 , and he served as the chief engineer for the W & A until November 3 , 1840 . He arrived in north Georgia in late May and his surveying began in July and by November he had submitted an initial report which the construction followed almost exactly . In 1838 he was appointed to a position in the newly separated U . S . Corps of Topographical Engineers . Like most of their officers Major Long remained loyal to the Federal government during the Civil War , and he became Colonel of the Corps in 1861 until its merger back into the U . S . Corps of Engineers in 1863 . He died in Alton , Illinois in 1864 . 1817 - 23 expeditions up the Missouri and Platte Rivers . Like most engineers , Long was college - trained , interested in searching for order in the natural world , and willing to work with the modern technology of the time . Topographical engineers had basically two unique points of view that set them apart from the other pioneers — geographical and technological . In 1818 he was appointed to organise a scientific contingent to accompany soldiers of Col . Henry Atkinson ' s command on the Yellowstone Expedition ( sometimes called the Atkinson - Long Expedition ) . This was planned to explore the upper Missouri , and Long spent the autumn designing the construction of an experimental steamboat for the venture , " Western Engineer " . Departing from St . Louis in June 1819 , it was the first steamboat to travel up the Missouri River into the Louisiana Purchase territory , and the first steamboat to have a stern paddle wheel . On September 17 , Long ' s party arrived at Fort Lisa , a trading fort belonging to William Clark ' s Missouri Fur Company . It was about five miles south of Council Bluffs , Iowa . Long ' s group built their winter quarters nearby and called it " Engineer Cantonment . " Within a month , Long returned to the east coast , and by the following May , his orders had changed . The Yellowstone Expedition had become a costly failure and so instead of exploring the Missouri River , President James Monroe decided to have Long lead an expedition up the Platte River to the Rocky mountains and back along the border with the Spanish colonies . Exploring that border was vital , since John Quincy Adams had just concluded the treaty with Spain , which drew a new U . S . border to the Pacific . Major Long was the leader of the first scientific exploration up the Platte , which planned to study the geography and natural resources of the area . His party of 19 men included landscape painter Samuel Seymour , naturalist painter Titian Peale , zoologist Thomas Say and Edwin P . James , a physician knowledgeable in both geology and botany . James lead the first recorded ascent of Pikes Peak during this expedition . On June 6 , 1820 , they traveled up the north bank of the Platte and met Pawnee and Otoe Indians . On October 14 , 1820 , 400 Omaha assembled at a meeting with Long , where Chief Big Elk made the following speech : After finding and naming Longs Peak and the Rocky Mountains , they journeyed down the South Platte River to the Arkansas River watershed . The expedition was then split , and Long led his group towards the Red River . They missed it , ran into hostile Indians and had to eventually eat their own horses to survive before they finally met the other part of the expedition at Fort Smith in Arkansas . Long and his party of scientists would learn much to tell the nation and have the opportunity to show the U . S . flag . Report . In his report of the 1820 expedition , Long wrote that the Plains from Nebraska to Oklahoma were " unfit for cultivation and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture . " On the map he made of his explorations , he called the area a " Great Desert . " Long felt the area labeled the " Great Desert " would be better suited as a buffer against the Spanish , British , and Russians , who shared the continent with the Americans . He also commented that the eastern wooded portion of the country should be filled up before the republic attempted any further extension westward . He commented that sending settlers to that area was out of the question . Given the technology of the 1820s , Long was right . There was little timber for houses or fuel , minimal surface water , sandy soil , hard winters , vast herds of bison ( buffalo ) , hostile Indians , and no easy means of communication . However , it ' s ironic that the native tribes had been living there for centuries and that , by the end of the 19th century , the " Great Desert " had become the nation ' s breadbasket . There were two key results of this expedition — a very accurate description of Indian customs and Indian life as they existed among the Omaha , Otoes , and Pawnees and his description of the land west of the Missouri River as a " desert " . 1823 expedition to the Red River of the North . Major Long ' s 1823 expedition up the Minnesota River ( then known as St . Peter ' s River ) , to the headwaters of the Red River of the North , down that river to Pembina and Fort Garry , and thence by canoe across British Canada to Lake Huron is sometimes confused with his initial expedition to the Red River in modern - day Texas and Oklahoma . The expedition to the Red River of the North was a separate , later appointment which completed a series of explorations conceived of by Lewis Cass and implemented by David B . Douglass , Henry Schoolcraft , and others besides Major Long . The 1823 expedition was denoted primarily as a scientific reconnaissance and an evaluation of trade possibilities , but probably had undisclosed military objectives as well , and certainly was viewed with suspicion by British authorities in Canada . This expedition for a time was joined by the Italian adventurer Giacomo Beltrami , who argued with Long and left the expedition near Fort Garry . The 1823 expedition encouraged American traders to push into the fur trade in Northern Minnesota and Dakota , and fostered the development of the Red River Trails and a colorful chapter of ox cart trade between the Red River Colony and Fort Garry via Pembina and the newly developing towns of Mendota and St . Paul .