Research complied by Mr. Ron James, RSJH Educator

Robert Stuart Jr. High is named after one of the West’s most adventurous and important explorers. Robert Stuart led the second American expedition to cross southern Idaho’s Snake River Plain and his journal contains some of the earliest detailed descriptions of Native Americans, places, plants and animals of the region.

 Robert Stuart was born in Callander, Scotland on February 19, 1785.  In 1807, Stuart came to America to join his uncle, David Stuart, in the Canadian fur trade.  In 1810, Stuart became a junior partner in John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company.   In the vanguard of trappers and explorers who followed the Lewis and Clark Expedition, none had a more lasting effect on the history of southern Idaho than the Astorians.  In 1810, fur merchant John Jacob Astor sent two expeditions, one by land and the other by sea, to establish a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia.  The overland group, led by Wilson Price Hunt, completed the second American- led crossing of the North American continent.  The overland Astorians produced the earliest written accounts describing southern Idaho.

      Attempting to navigate an all-water route to the Pacific, the Astorians met with disaster as they entered the Snake River Canyon near the present-day Milner Dam.  One man was drowned and they were forced to walk the rest of the way to Astoria, Oregon.  The following spring, Astorian Robert Stuart and six other men journeyed east on a harrowing 3700 mile trek in which they faced death by cold, starvation and hostile Indians, tracing a route that would later become the Oregon Trail.

     Stuart’s voyage and journey East across the continent are described in his diary which was published in 1935 as The Discovery of the Oregon Trail, edited by Philip Ashton Rollins.  Stuart’s diary, regarded by historians as one of the most important records of Western exploration, was also used as a source by Washington Irving when he wrote Astoria.