The 13 Greatest American Explorers of All Time

Rivers, ice, jungle and orbit. The map has been finished for a while, which only makes the people who filled it in stranger.

1

Meriwether Lewis

Co-led the expedition that crossed the continent to the Pacific and back between 1804 and 1806.

2

William Clark

The mapmaker of the Corps of Discovery, whose charts stood as the best of the West for decades.

3

Neil Armstrong

Commanded Apollo 11 and became the first person to set foot on another world.

4

Sacagawea

The Lemhi Shoshone interpreter and guide whose presence and knowledge kept the Lewis and Clark expedition alive.

5

Robert Peary

Led the 1909 Arctic expedition that claimed the North Pole, a claim argued over ever since.

6

Matthew Henson

Peary's co-explorer on eight Arctic voyages and, by several accounts, the first man to stand at the Pole.

7

Theodore Roosevelt

Co-led the 1913–14 descent of the Amazon's River of Doubt, now the Rio Roosevelt, and nearly died doing it.

8

John Wesley Powell

Ran the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 with one arm and four boats.

9

Amelia Earhart

First woman to fly the Atlantic solo, and the century's most famous disappearance.

10

Charles Lindbergh

Flew the first solo nonstop crossing of the Atlantic in 1927 in thirty-three and a half hours.

11

Robert Ballard

The oceanographer who found the Titanic in 1985 and turned deep-sea robotics into exploration.

12

Sally Ride

The first American woman in space, aboard Challenger in 1983.

13

Zebulon Pike

Explored the southern Louisiana Purchase and left his name on the Colorado peak he never climbed.