Walter W. de Lacy

Walter Washington de Lacy (February 22, 1819–May 13, 1892) was an civil engineer, surveyor and map maker prominent in the history of the Montana Territory and mapping of the Rocky Mountain west. He was a graduate of West Point and a Colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Early life
Walter Washington de Lacy was born on February 22, 1819 in Petersburg, Virginia. He was the son of William and Eliza de Lacy of Norfolk, Virginia. He spent his childhood in Norfolk. His parents died while he was still a child and he was raised and educated by aunts and uncles. His paternal grandfather was a native of Wexford, Ireland and was a descendant of a celebrated Norman knight, Hugh de Lacy, the first Norman Governor of Ireland under Henry II in 1172. At the age of fifteen he entered Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and graduated in 1838. At Mount St. Mary's he became schooled in mathematics and learned several languages including Spanish, French and Portuguese.

West Point
In 1839 de Lacy sought and received an appointment to West Point, but his appointment was revoked due to a clerical error. However, through the good offices of his uncle William de Lacy, whose uncle was Walter's grand uncle Michael de Lacy, a close personal friend of renowned West Point professor Dennis Hart Mahan, de Lacy enrolled at West Point for private instructions in mathematics, surveying, civil engineering and topography. Mahan, as a young son of a poor Irish immigrant in Virginia was educated by Michael de Lacy when there were no public schools in Virginia.

Upon completing the courses at West Point, de Lacy started his career as a civil engineer at the age of twenty. For several months in 1839, was was employed as an engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad and the Iron Mountain Railroad. In January, 1840 de Lacy was commissioned as a Captain in the U.S. Army by West Point which was providing direct commissions to civilians at the time. Shortly afterward though he resigned his commission and did not join an active regiment.

U.S. Navy
In the summer of 1840 he accepted a position with the U.S. Navy teaching modern languages to midshipmen on board the USS Pennsylvania, USS Marion, and USS Ohio; a position he held for five years. While the USS Marion was visiting Carribean, Central, South American, West African and South African ports inspecting US Consulates in 1841-42, he served as interpreter for the ship's captain and other high ranking U.S. officials. One of their objectives in West Africa was the recruitment of Kroomen, a talented tribe of African fishermen often used as pilots along the African coast.

Mexico
By 1846 de Lacy was conducting surveys in the Lake Superior region. He was hired by wealthy industrialists to search for abandoned Spanish silver mines in Texas and New Mexico. His explorations extended into northern Mexico about the time the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) started. His connection with the U.S. Navy and Army allowed him to participate as a volunteer in a number of engagements. For his efforts he was promoted to Colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

During the war he met Jack Hays, a captain in the Texas Rangers. When Hays was assigned to survey a road from San Antonio to Chihuahua, Mexico, he engaged de Lacy to help.

At that point his skill with topography proved invaluable as the party of 70 men encountered deserts that white men had never traveled before. At one point they wandered for 80 days, with only 25 days of rations, because the hired guides proved to be incompetent. They finally stumbled upon the old Comanche Trail and reached San Carlos, Mexico, which is today a beachfront subdivision of the port city of Guaymas, in the state of Sonora, on the Sea of Cortez. That experience of living off the land and charting new territory would form a backbone for deLacy's many challenges in new territory over the next three decades.

The rangers returned to San Antonio but deLacy decided to stay in the region, which was then encompassed by a series of huge cattle ranches. While traveling as a merchandise trader on mule back, deLacy chanced upon an Apache chief who soon became his friend and introduced Walter to the Bolson de Mapimí (or Comarca Laguner) river basin which is located in the Mexican Plateau (west-central) and centered on the state of Durango, then the least known area of the country. The basin is bounded by the Sierra Madre Occidental to the west, and by the basin of the Conchos River, a tributary of the Rio Grande, to the north, and the water system is endorheic, or self-contained, with no outflow to other bodies of water. From the Memorial: ". . . he discovered while there was an Indian training school, where the boys were taught to imitate the howl of a wolf, the hoot of an owl, the cries of other animals and birds, and other features of Indian warfare." Following that, he settled as a trader for a year or two at the Presidio del Norte, where the Seventh Mexican Infantry and the Chihuahua Lancers were stationed.

In 1849, deLacy returned to San Antonio and joined a party of U.S. topographical engineers who set out on an expedition along the Texas and New Mexico frontier to determine possible sites for military posts. His earlier experience was repeated as the party missed locating the Pecos River and wandered over the dry prairies without water for five days, while some of the men were driven to insanity. They were only saved after the mules' keen sense of smell led them to a natural stream. Continuing on to the Rio Grande River, the party encountered a band of Apaches intent on wiping out the expedition, but the war party included some members of the tribe whom deLacy met while at Mapimi, so deLacy's group was allowed to leave.

After traveling to New Orleans in 1850, deLacy was hired by a railroad developer to act as a hydrographic engineer to survey a proposed railroad route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow neck of land in the state of Oaxaca in south-central Mexico. After seven months of that assignment the New Orleans and Jackson Railroad hired him for a three-year siting-survey, during which he met an engineer named Benjamin H. Greene, who three decades later would be Walter's boss in Montana.

Washington territory
In 1859 Walter de Lacy began working with U.S. Army topographical engineer Lieutenant John Mullan to survey and build a military road from Fort Benton, Montana, the head of navigation on the Missouri River, to Walla Walla near the Columbia River in Washington Territory. The road, which became known as the Mullan Road, was the first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Inland of the Pacific Northwest. It was completed in 1860. It became a favored route to the Montana gold fields from the west. De Lacy was discharged in 1860, and for the next four years he prospected in the Pacific Northwest. In 1864 he laid out the townsite of Fort Benton. He attended the First Montana Territorial Legislative Assembly in Bannack that same year. The assembly directed de Lacy to draw the first map of Montana Territory for the purpose of laying out counties. In 1865, de Lacy platted the townsites of Deer Lodge and Argenta. By 1867, during the Sioux War, he had been appointed Colonel of Engineers by Acting Governor Thomas F. Meagher. From 1867 to 1871, he was engaged in the office of the Surveyor-General making maps for the Northern Pacific Railroad.

1863 Snake River expedition
In August 1863, de Lacy was prospecting in Virginia City, Montana and joined a small prospecting expedition that was headed to the south fork of the upper Snake River in Wyoming Territory. On August 8th, 1863, 28 prospectors gathered near Blacktail Deer Creek on the Beaverhead River near today's Dillon, Montana to prepare for the trip. The group elected de Lacy captain of the expedition. During this expedition, de Lacy led a small group of prospectors north up the south fork of the Snake River into what was to become Yellowstone National Park. On September 6, 1863, de Lacy discovered Shoshone Lake as the source of the south fork of the Snake River. At the time, he named the lake de Lacy's lake, but it was later changed by the Hayden Geological Survey of 1872 to Shoshone Lake. de Lacy's group of prospectors traveled through the Lower Geyser Basin in Yellowstone and left the area via the Madison River but the trip was not documented or written about until 1876, well after the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition (1869), Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition (1870) and Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 which were credited with discovery and creation of Yellowstone National Park. In 1881, then park superintendent Philetus Norris named a tributary stream of Shoshone Lake, de Lacy Creek and the meadows that surround it, de Lacy Park to honor de Lacy's efforts in mapping the territory. De Lacy Creek is crossed by the Grand Loop Road near Craig Pass.

1865 and 1870 maps of Montana Territory
In 1864, shortly after the establishment of the Montana Territory, the territorial legislature commissioned a map of the new territory from W. W. de Lacy. The map was completed in February, 1865. The map encompassed present-day Montana, the northern half of the modern state of Wyoming, the eastern part of Idaho and the Idaho panhandle, and the westernmost strip of what is now North and South Dakota. The 1865 map is considered one of the rarest territorial maps of the western United States. Upon his return from the 1869 expedition into the upper Yellowstone, David E. Folsom gained employment with the Montana Surveyor General's office and worked closely with de Lacy. Based in part on the expedition's observations, de Lacy produced an updated map of the territory in the summer of 1870. Nathaniel P. Langford and Henry Washburn were familar with de Lacy's 1865 and 1870 maps when they embarked on their 1870 expedition into the upper Yellowstone. The 1870 version of de Lacy's map was used extensively as a reference by geologist Ferdinand Hayden is his 1871 survey into the upper Yellowstone.

Walter de Lacy was a charter member of the.

He was a founding member of the Society of Montana Pioneers and served as the society's second president in 1885. He was elected City Engineer of Helena, Montana in 1883, and later served as Chief Clerk to the Surveyor General of the United States until his death on May 13, 1892.