Three Perspectives on an Event of Middling Importance:

The Transcontinental Excursion of 1912

In the late summer and early autumn of 1912, William Morris Davis, a self-identified geographer trained as a geologist, newly retired from his endowed chair at Harvard University, led an excursion of European and American scientists twice across the North American continent, covering more than 13,000 miles in fifty-seven days by private train. The extended outing was organized ostensibly for the benefit of the Europeans. Davis held the conviction that they would benefit from seeing the United States in his company.

The Transcontinental Excursion of 1912 of the American Geographical Society of New York was an event of middling importance. An event of greater significance might have yielded some theoretical synthesis or a “discovery” of some kind; nothing of the sort issued from the excursion. But the excursion is not unimportant, either for geographers (who will reenact it in 2012) or for science studies. Indeed, it is a rich source for new directions in science studies.

In this presentation I provide three perspectives on the excursion. In the first, I offer the excursion as a visual narrative: a “comic book” hoist out of the deep well of graphic or visual primary sources from which I am drawing. In the second, I present the narrative as a framework for reconstructing a synchronic, nonretrospective environmental history of North America. In the third and final perspective I examine the materials from a science studies perspective (as though the first two are not!). What is the role of organized field trips and excursions in the prosecution of the field sciences?