Journals: To the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793

Explorer Alexander Mackenzie details his journeys to both the Arctic and Pacific Oceans in his personal journals. In 1789 he took, what later became known, as Mackenzie River expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Thinking that it would lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska, Mackenzie set out by canoe on the river known to the local people as the Dehcho on 3 July 1789. On 14 July he reached the Arctic Ocean, rather than the Pacific.

Ironically he called the waterway "the River Disappointment," since the river did not prove to be the Northwest Passage, as he had hoped. The river later came to be known as the Mackenzie River in his honor. Mackenzie returned to Canada in 1792, set out once again to find a route to the Pacific, what he managed in the summer of 1973. Having done this, he had completed the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico, 12 years before Lewis and Clark.