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LONG, STEPHEN H. (1784-1864)

Stephen Harriman Long, army engineer and explorer, helped foster the idea that the Great Plains was the Great American Desert.

Son of Moses and Lucy Long, he was born on December 10, 1784, at Hopkinton, New Hampshire. In 1809 he graduated from Dartmouth College, and for the next five years he taught school and worked as a surveyor.

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Near the end of the War of 1812, Long became a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. He remained an army officer for nearly fifty years.

Long hoped to become the next important western explorer after Lewis and Clark, and in 1818 he received orders to organize and lead a scientific expedition west.

That year he designed a steamboat, the Western Engineer, to carry the scientists up the Missouri River, but it proved unable to navigate that river successfully. In 1820 Long led a small party of scientists and soldiers west to the Rocky Mountains.

They examined the land, stre