John Bradbury - Botanist

John Bradbury has been acknowledged as the first trained botanist to explore the interior of the great West systematically. Historians dispute whether Bradbury was born in England or Scotland, but they agree that his 1809 botanizing journey west from St. Louis was the first of its kind. Working under the auspices of the Botanical Society of Liverpool, Bradbury catalogued almost one hundred of "the more rare or valuable plants discovered in the neighborhood of St. Louis and on the Missouri."

The 1817 publication of his Travels in the Interior of America was eagerly read on both sides of the Atlantic, as it provided the first description of the great valley of the Mississippi River.