Lunchtime Expedition: Jaggar Revisited

Join the Draper Natural History Museum for our February Lunchtime Expedition, the kick-off for our 2025 season. Park County Archives Curator Brian Beauvais presents Jaggar Revisited: Rephotographing the 1893 Absaroka Expedition.

While talks in our Lunchtime Expedition series will not be live streamed going forward, they will be recorded and posted to the Draper Museum’s YouTube channel within a couple days after they take place.

Jaggar was twenty-two years old and fresh out of college. He kept a journal of the expedition and field notes of his geological observations. He also took photographs of the geological features throughout the duration of the trip. Looking at Jaggar’s photos today provides a fascinating glimpse at the character of the landscape over one hundred and thirty years ago.

In the spring of 2020 Brian Beauvais began locating and rephotographing the images Jaggar captured in 1893 and on a later trip in 1897 so as to document the landscape over time. This undertaking involved hiking and horseback riding to numerous places along Jaggar’s route—some quite accessible, others very remote.

This program will recount Jaggar’s 1893 expedition through the Absaroka Mountains using his journal entries and the photographs he captured as guides. Beauvais will describe the historic landscape Jaggar encountered and discuss how comparing old photographs with contemporary versions can illuminate changes occurring in our local landscapes.