50 Fun Facts About John C. Fremont

Which future president lost the vice-presidential spot on John C. Frémont's 1856 Republican ticket to William Dayton?

Abraham Lincoln, then a former congressman from Illinois, finished second in the convention's vote for running mate. Four years later he topped the Republican ticket himself.

Which mountain man did John C. Frémont hire as a guide in 1842 after a chance meeting on a steamboat?

Kit Carson signed on for $100 a month, the best-paying job of his life. Frémont's widely read reports then made the quiet trapper famous across the country.

Which San Francisco Bay name did John C. Frémont coin in 1846, modeled on an ancient harbor at Byzantium?

The Golden Gate got its name before the Gold Rush had even begun. Frémont saw the strait as a gateway to trade with Asia, echoing Byzantium's Golden Horn.

The Fremont Cannon, a football trophy copying John C. Frémont's howitzer, is contested by universities in which state?

Nevada and UNLV play for the 545-pound replica every year, and the winner repaints its carriage in school colors. Frémont abandoned the real howitzer in deep Sierra snow.

Which city named its first paved street, later lined with famous casinos, after the explorer John C. Frémont?

Las Vegas laid out Fremont Street in 1905, paved it in 1925 and hung the city's first traffic light there in 1931. Frémont reached the valley in 1844, and his writings helped lure pioneers.

Which Democrat defeated John C. Frémont, the first Republican presidential nominee, in the three-way election of 1856?

James Buchanan won 174 electoral votes to Frémont's 114. Frémont carried eleven states but not California, his own home state.

Which obscure general did John C. Frémont give a key river command in 1861, ignoring Army gossip about drinking?

Ulysses S. Grant got the post at Cairo, Illinois, after Frémont judged him a man of dogged persistence and iron will. Days later he took Paducah, Kentucky, without firing a shot.

What kind of craft did John C. Frémont's party paddle to an island in the Great Salt Lake in 1843?

A rubber boat, inflatable and eighteen feet long, carried five men and their instruments about five miles across the salty water. It was the first scientific survey of the lake.

In which border state did General John C. Frémont free rebels' slaves in 1861, an order the White House overturned?

Missouri was under Frémont's martial law when he declared rebels' slaves free, over a year before the Emancipation Proclamation. He refused to retract the order and lost his command that November.

Which nickname did Americans give John C. Frémont after his 1840s expeditions mapped routes across the West?

The Pathfinder was a generous title, since trappers had already found many of his routes. His real gift was mapping and describing them so that ordinary emigrants could follow.

Which powerful senator became John C. Frémont's patron after his teenage daughter Jessie eloped with the young officer?

Thomas Hart Benton was furious at first, then pushed funding for three of Frémont's expeditions through Congress. In 1856, though, the lifelong Democrat voted against his son-in-law.

Which Confederate general outfoxed John C. Frémont in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862, escaping after Cross Keys?

Stonewall Jackson kept three separate Union armies off balance that spring, then slipped out of the valley to join the defense of Richmond. Frémont took the blame for letting him get away.

In which Southern port city was John C. Frémont born in 1813, the child of a scandalous Virginia elopement?

Savannah was where his parents settled after fleeing Virginia, and they never married. Political opponents threw his birth in his face decades later, during his run for the White House.

Which Western territory did John C. Frémont govern from 1878 to 1881, though he spent little time there?

Arizona saw so little of its governor that he was told to do the job in person or resign. Frémont, whose fortune was long gone by then, chose to resign.

Which emigrant route did John C. Frémont's maps chart in such detail that thousands of pioneers used them as a guide?

The Oregon Trail filled seven of his maps, which the Senate published in 1846 as a guide for wagon trains. Congress had already ordered his lively second report printed by the thousands.

Which famous body of water in the Sierra did John C. Frémont become the first American explorer to see in 1844?

Lake Tahoe got a different name from Frémont, who called it Lake Bonpland after a botanist. The label never caught on.

What name did John C. Frémont coin for the vast Western region whose rivers never reach any ocean?

The Great Basin's streams end in salty lakes or sink into the desert instead of reaching the sea. Frémont's finding wiped a mythical westward river off American maps.

Which industry swallowed most of John C. Frémont's Gold Rush fortune through failed investments after the Civil War?

Railroads ruined him twice: a line he bought in 1866 was repossessed a year later, and the Panic of 1873 erased much of what was left. The onetime millionaire died nearly penniless.

Which Swiss immigrant welcomed John C. Frémont's weary party at his Sacramento Valley fort in March 1844?

John Sutter fed and re-equipped the explorers after their winter crossing of the Sierra. Four years later, gold found at his sawmill set off the California Gold Rush.

Which faith did a false 1856 campaign rumor claim John C. Frémont secretly followed, costing him nativist votes?

Catholicism was the charge, and his surname and his father's Canadian roots made it believable to many voters. Republicans feared that a loud denial would offend German Catholic supporters.

Which president upheld John C. Frémont's 1848 court-martial conviction but cancelled his dismissal from the Army?

James K. Polk spared him partly to placate Frémont's powerful father-in-law in the Senate. Frémont, insulted by anything short of full vindication, resigned his commission anyway.

Which Army general had John C. Frémont arrested in 1847 after their feud over who governed conquered California?

Stephen Kearny made Frémont march east behind his column and had him arrested at Fort Leavenworth. The explorer had gone on acting as governor on a Navy commodore's say-so.

Which grave charge headed the list when the Army court-martialed John C. Frémont for defying a superior in California?

Mutiny was the gravest charge, alongside disobeying orders. Less than two years after the verdict, California's legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate.

Which California town did rebel settlers seize in June 1846, launching the Bear Flag Revolt that John C. Frémont backed?

Sonoma fell to 34 armed rebels, who took Colonel Mariano Vallejo prisoner and raised a roughly sewn flag. Frémont publicly denied responsibility, yet the captives were held on his orders.

Which Sierra foothill ranch, bought for John C. Frémont for $3,000 before gold turned up there, made him rich?

Las Mariposas began as a mistake: Frémont sent the money for land near San Francisco Bay, and his agent bought a remote tract near Yosemite instead. Then its quartz veins started yielding gold.

How did John C. Frémont end up with the shorter term when California's first two U.S. senators were seated in 1850?

Drawing lots handed him a term that ran out in under six months, and he spent only 21 working days in the chamber. He then lost his bid for a full term.

How did John C. Frémont's wife Jessie keep the family afloat after his fortune vanished in the 1870s?

Writing books and stories for popular magazines, Jessie turned her memories of the West into income. She had practice: decades earlier she helped shape his expedition reports into bestsellers.

Which short-lived faction nominated John C. Frémont for president in 1864, before he quit the race that September?

The Radical Democratic Party was a splinter of abolitionists who found the wartime administration too soft on slavery. Within days of Frémont quitting the race, a conservative cabinet member lost his job.

In which city did the 77-year-old John C. Frémont die of peritonitis in July 1890?

New York was where he died, three months after he was put back on the Army's rolls as a retired major general so that he could collect a pension.

Why did the College of Charleston expel the gifted young John C. Frémont in 1831, two years after he enrolled?

Irregular attendance was the reason the college gave for expelling him. A well-connected local politician later found him a job at sea all the same.

What was John C. Frémont's father hired to teach a wealthy Richmond man's young wife before the pair ran off together?

French lessons turned into an affair, and the husband threw both of them out of the house. The couple never married, and she took in boarders to help raise their children.

Which subject did a young John C. Frémont teach aboard the Navy sloop USS Natchez on an 1833 cruise?

Mathematics was his ticket to sea, on a cruise through Latin American waters. He later resigned from the Navy and put the same skill to work as an Army surveyor.

Which cabinet post did Joel Poinsett hold when he sent the young John C. Frémont west on his first surveys?

Secretary of War Poinsett had been Frémont's patron for years. He is better remembered as the diplomat who sent home from Mexico the red Christmas plant that now carries his name.

Which scientist trained John C. Frémont in mapmaking on surveys of the upper Mississippi country in the late 1830s?

Joseph Nicollet schooled him in astronomy and geology and in recording plants, soil and water as he traveled. When illness stopped the older man, Frémont was chosen as his successor.

Which Army branch commissioned the young John C. Frémont as a second lieutenant and sent him on his western surveys?

Topographical Engineers ran the Army's mapping of the West, and Frémont's 1842 survey of the main emigrant road was one of the corps's expeditions.

Which broad, gentle gap over the Continental Divide in Wyoming was John C. Frémont sent to survey in 1842?

South Pass rises so gradually that Frémont's party had to watch closely to tell where they had reached the top. It gave emigrant wagons a natural crossing of the mountains.

Which naturalist did John C. Frémont honor in 1845 by renaming a desert river that California-bound wagons followed?

Humboldt, the German scientist, replaced the older name Mary's River on Frémont's map. The stream became the primary land route for migrants heading to the gold fields.

Which coastal town did John C. Frémont's battalion take without bloodshed after a stormy Christmas Eve mountain trek?

Santa Barbara fell after his men crossed the Santa Ynez Mountains in a rainstorm, losing horses, mules and cannons on the muddy slopes. Weeks later he accepted the surrender that ended the fighting in California.

Which Navy commodore appointed John C. Frémont military governor of California in January 1847?

Robert Stockton, namesake of a California city, made the appointment and promptly left Los Angeles. An Army general holding orders from Washington refused to recognize it, and the clash ended in Frémont's court-martial.

Which 1847 agreement, signed by John C. Frémont and Andrés Pico near Los Angeles, ended the fighting in California?

The Treaty of Cahuenga was signed at a rancho without the formal backing of either government. Its terms let the Californios go home, and nearly all of them later became American citizens.

Which mythical river, mapped as running from the Rockies to the Pacific, did John C. Frémont's 1844 trek help debunk?

The Buenaventura had promised mapmakers an easy water route to the sea. Frémont reported that no stream in the region found an outlet, as the travels of earlier trappers had already suggested.

Which eccentric mountain man guided John C. Frémont's disastrous 1848 winter expedition into the southern Rockies?

Old Bill Williams was hired at Pueblo, Colorado, after most trappers had advised against a winter crossing. He was killed months later while retracing the route to recover the party's gear.

What gloomy name did John C. Frémont give the barren Great Salt Lake outcrop that now bears his own name?

Disappointment Island earned its name because Frémont expected game and thick vegetation and found neither. One of his men carved a cross into a rock there that can still be seen.

Which general, his junior in rank, did John C. Frémont refuse to serve under in 1862, ending his field career?

John Pope had served under Frémont the year before and had worked behind the scenes to get him removed. Asked to take orders from his former subordinate, Frémont went home and never held another command.

Charles Zagonyi, who led John C. Frémont's showy Civil War bodyguard, had fought in which country's 1848 revolution?

Hungary's hussars were the model for the guard, which rode matched bay horses in dark blue uniforms that Zagonyi designed. Critics said the general ran his headquarters like a European autocrat.

Which British institution honored John C. Frémont with its Patron's Medal in 1850, two years after his court-martial?

The Royal Geographical Society rewarded his western explorations at a moment when he had left the Army under a cloud. Five years later its gold medal went to David Livingstone.

Which riverside tree of the Southwest carries John C. Frémont's name in its scientific label, Populus fremontii?

Cottonwood of this species grows beside streams and springs across the Southwest. Frémont gathered so many specimens on his travels that over 20 plants carry his name.

How did artist Solomon Carvalho record John C. Frémont's 1853 winter expedition across the Rockies?

Daguerreotype photographs, nearly 300 of them, came out of the freezing mountains, though most were later lost in a fire. Carvalho almost died of scurvy and frostbite on the trip.

Which former president ran as the Know Nothing candidate against John C. Frémont in the three-way 1856 race?

Millard Fillmore carried only Maryland as the American Party's nominee. His party also started the false campaign rumor about Frémont's religion.

On what did the United States honor John C. Frémont in 1898, showing him raising a flag in the Rockies?

A postage stamp in the Trans-Mississippi series showed him on a summit with the flag, a scene from his 1842 expedition. It was the five-cent value, printed in dark blue.