Summits to Reach: An Annotated Edition of Franklin Rhoda's Report on the Topography of the San Juan Country

An account of the Hayden Survey's 1874 exploration of Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

From the Preface:
"Written by a brilliant twenty-year-old just a year of of college, the Report is an accurate account of a surveying party in Colorado during the summer of 1874. In the process of mapping some 5,200 square miles of perhaps the most rugged and scenic part of the Rocky Mountains, Rhoda and his colleagues fended off grizzly bears, barely escape electrocution several times, and observed the first prospectors in the mining camps. They climbed thirty-five summits over 12,000 feet, most of which had never been ascended. Trails were few, roads even rare, and reliable guides nonexistent..."