David Thompson

Apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company as an orphan at age 14, Thompson mastered celestial navigation and surveying. Joining the North West Company in 1797, he surveyed the Canada-US border along the 49th parallel, the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and navigated the entire length of the Columbia River from its source to the Pacific in 1811.

Accompanied throughout his travels by his Cree wife Charlotte Small, Thompson produced the monumental 1814 map of Western North America that served as the foundational cartographic reference for governments and explorers for over a century.