This history is the first to detail the lives, adventures, and discoveries of pioneering American naturalists such as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Martha Maxwell, Spencer Baird, Asa Gray, John Torrey, Florence bailey, John Burroughs, and John Muir. From discovering new species to discovering prehistoric fossils, Early American Naturalists celebrates these intrepid trailblazers who boldly navigated and documented the untrammeled, awe-inspiring frontier west of the Mississippi.