John G. Parke graduated second in his class at West Point in 1849 and was assigned to the Army Corps of Topological Engineers, an elite group of soldier-scientists assigned to map the newly acquired territories of the American West.
In September, 1851 Lt. Parke was a member of Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves’ expedition surveying west from the Zuni Villages of New Mexico to the Colorado River. After a journey of considerable hardship they traveled downstream to Fort Yuma.
In 1854, Parke was b
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