Charles Preuss

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George Karl Ludwig Preuss (born 1803), Anglicized as Charles Preuss, was a surveyor and cartographer who accompanied John C. Fremont on his exploratory expeditions of the American west, including the expedition where he and Fremont were the first to record seeing Lake Tahoe from a mountaintop vantage point as they traversed what is now Carson Pass in February 1844. ^[1] He participated in expeditions until he reached the age of 50. One year later, in 1854, he committed suicide.

His diary of the Fremont expedition was featured on a 2008 episode of This American Life. It contrasted Fremont's exuberance with Preuss' sober, often humorously melancholy opinions of the expedition. [1]