Alexander MacKenzie

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For other persons named Alexander Mackenzie, see Alexander Mackenzie (disambiguation).

Alexander MacKenzie painted by Thomas Lawrence (c.1800), courtesy National Gallery of Canada.

Sir Alexander MacKenzie (1764 - March 11, 1820) was a Scottish-Canadian explorer.

MacKenzie was born in Stornoway on the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. In 1774 his family moved to New York, and then to Montreal in 1776 during the American Revolution. In 1779 he obtained a job with the North West Company, on whose behalf he travelled to Lake Athabasca and founded Fort Chipewyan in 1788. He was sent to replace Peter Pond, a partner in the North West Company. From Pond he learned that the First Nations people understood that the local rivers flowed to the northwest. Acting on this information he set out by canoe and discovered the MacKenzie River on July 10, 1789, following it to its mouth in the hope of finding the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Although he ended up discovering the Arctic Ocean, he named the river "Disappointment River" as it did not lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska as he had expected. The river was later renamed in his honour.

In 1791 he travelled to the United Kingdom to study the new advances in the measurement of longitude. Upon his return in 1792 he set out once again to find a route to the Pacific. Accompanied by Native guides and French voyageurs, Mackenzie left Fort Fork following the route of the Peace River. Arriving at Bella Coola on July 20, 1793 he became the first European to cross North America, crossing both the Continental Divide and the Rocky Mountains. He found the upper reaches of the Fraser River and following its course, reached the Pacific coast of Canada on July 20 of that year, completing the first recorded transcontinental crossing north of Mexico. He arrived at Bella Coola, where he first reached saltwater at South Bentinck Arm, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. He had wanted to continue westward out of an apparent desire to encounter the open Ocean, but was turned back by the hostility of the Nuxalk nation, who were suspicious of Europeans, after negative encounters with marine fur traders. At his westernmost point, (July 22, 1793), hemmed in by Nuxalk war canoes, he enscribed "Alex MacKenzie from Canada by land 22^d July 1793" on a rock using a reddish paint made of vermilion and bear grease, and turned around to return to "Canada". The rock, near the water's edge, still bears his words, which were permanently inscribed later by surveyors. The site is now a provincial park.