History
Following his 1906 expedition that failed to reach the North Pole, Robert E. Peary reported in his book that he had sighted distant land from the heights of the northwestern coast of Ellesmere Island. He named it Crocker Land after San Francisco banker George Crocker, one of his financial backers. It is now known that Peary's report was a hoax, as he wrote in his diary at the time that no land was visible. And indeed, there is no such land north of Ellesmere Island. The invention of Crocker Land was apparently an attempt to secure further support from Crocker for Peary's 1909 expedition. If so, the attempt failed, as Crocker had diverted all of his available resources to the rebuilding of San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake.
However, the existence or non-existence of Crocker Land became important following the controversial events of the autumn of 1909, when both Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook returned to civilization, both claiming to have reached the North Pole. Since Cook claimed to have traversed the alleged region of Crocker Land and reported no such land, the actual existence of Crocker Land would be further proof of the falsity of Cook's claim. Backers of Peary's claim therefore set out to find it.
The expedition was organized by Donald Baxter MacMillan and sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society, and the University of Illinois' Museum of Natural History.
MacMillan's geologist, ornithologist and botanist was Walter Elmer Ekblaw of the University of Illinois. Navy Ensign Fitzhugh Green served as engineer and physicist. Maurice Cole Tanquary of the University of Illinois was the zoologist and Dr. Harrison J. Hunt the surgeon.
Minik Wallace, the Inuit famously brought to the United States as a child by Robert Peary in 1897, was the guide and translator for the expedition.
As well as confirming and mapping the position of Crocker Land, the declared purpose of the expedition was to investigate "geology, geography, glaciology, meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, electrical phenomena, seismology, zoology (both vertebrate and invertebrate), botany, oceanography, ethnology, and archaeology".
In newspapers of the time, MacMillan described Crocker Land as "the world’s last geographical problem".
- "In June 1906, Commander Peary, from the summit of Cape Thomas Hubbard, at about latitude 83 degrees N, longitude 100 degrees W, reported seeing land glimmering in the northwest, approximately 130 miles (210 km) away across the Polar Sea. He did not go there, but he gave it a name in honor of the late George Crocker of the Peary Arctic Club. That is Crocker Land. Its boundaries and extent can only be guessed at, but I am certain that strange animals will be found there, and I hope to discover a new race of men."
- MacMillan,
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