Archaeology – Green River
The Crimson Cowboys:
The Remarkable Odyssey of the 1931 Claflin Emerson Expedition
Saturday, May 23, 2026 – 10am
A Cosmopolitan Event at Silver Reef
In 1931, a group from Harvard University’s Peabody Museum accomplished something that had never been attempted in the history of American archaeology: a six week, four-hundred-mile horseback survey of Fremont prehistoric sites through some of the West’s most rugged terrain. The expedition was successful, but a report on the findings was never completed. What should have been one of the great achaeological stories in American history was relegated to boxes and files in the basement of the Peabody Museum at Harvard. The talk situates in 1931 survey and its discoveries within the history of American archaeology.
Video of Presentation
About Presenter James M. Alton
James M. Aton is an award-winning author or coauthor of seven books on the Colorado Plateau’s rivers, explorers, and artists. Ohio University awarded him a PhD in American Literature in 1981. From 1980 to 2020, he was Professor of English at Southern Utah University. Aton was also a Visiting Fulbright Scholar in American Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia in 1989-90 and at Sichuan University of China in 1997-98. He currently serves as Board President of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance CPAA). Since 2003 he has assisted CPAA on scores of archaeological surveys and excavations on or near the Colorado Plateau.
Tour Two Places the Expedition Focused On
Click the image below to watch a video tour showing how to visit Nine Mile Canyon and a quick tour of Range Creek Canyon, both places where members of the expedition found many artifacts.
