National Geographic Magazine Vol. 08 - 02. February 1897

A dispatch from the edge of the American frontier, this February 1897 issue of National Geographic captures a nation still drunk on exploration. Here are the first serious studies of Crater Lake, Oregon's impossible blue depths, written by J. S. Diller when the lake was still a closely guarded secret of the Pacific Northwest. Emory F. Best contributes a urgent argument for the 'utilization' of vacant public lands, a window into the closing frontier and the political battles over America's last wild spaces. The Mazamas section chronicles a young mountaineering society conquering peaks that had never known human footprints. Also included: the National Geographic Society's own lecture series on how geography shapes civilization itself, delivered in an age when mappers still marked 'Here be dragons' on the unknown. This is National Geographic in its infancy, before photography dominated, when words were the vehicle for wonder. For historians of American exploration, this is primary source material that reads like a dispatch from a wilder nation.