“Mon 7/14 Waterton Lake Alberta, Canada. … I crossed the Boundary Line at 2 pm, and I took a couple pictures there of myself, then I kept on along the lake down to Waterton Lake town where I got a map from the rangers. And here I am camping tonight.”
In 94 days Pete Parsons, a Swedish immigrant who spoke, and wrote, English as a second language, trekked 1,500 miles as the crow flies from the US Mexico border to the boundary with Canada. In reality, the distance he traveled was considerably longer given he was setting his own trail. While it’s true he got a ride here and there, for the most part, he walked from Mexico to Canada, up the Continental Divide, without a formal trail and decades before anyone else. Was he the first? We may never know. Perhaps a band of Native Americans, during their seasonal migrations made the same trek, or a fir trader came south following the ridgelines. Was he one of the earliest Westerns to make the trip, undoubtedly.
Parsons journey doesn’t end at the Canadian Border. He continues on across Canada for while before dropping back into the United States at ???. From there he makes his way south, through Washington, Oregon, before ending his walk in Altavista, California in ????. In Oregon, he climbs Mt Jefferson, where you might recall he signs the summit register. His notation in the register, seen close to a hundred years later, set author and long trail hiker Barney Mann on his eight-year effort to learn more about Pete Parsons. We are thankful that he undertook that effort and we are grateful to the family of Otto Witt for donating Parsons journals, photographs, and other records to the Mazama Library and Historical Collections.
We thank you all for joining us and sharing Pete Parsons journey.