The Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship Lecture
"Signature Rocks: Emigration and the Signed Landscape in Indian Country 1830-1869"
Conrad Rudolph, Distinguished UCR Professor Emeritus of Medieval Art History
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 3:00 p.m.
Presentation delivered via Zoom
Description
Signature Rocks is the first systematic study of the surviving "signatures" inscribed by the emigrants, as they called themselves, on both the famous and not so famous rock formations that line the overland trails through Indian Country from the Missouri River to the Pacific from the 1830s to 1869. Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands, only several thousand have survived. Following the overland crossing, we read these inscriptions--an unrecognized and vanishing American archive--in light of a number of motivations to signing culled from the over two thousand emigrant journals and other accounts that have come down to us. The result is a new understanding of this completely overlooked aspect of one of the most iconic episodes in the history of the United States.
Register online through the retiree and emeriti webpage at: https://ucriverside.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6gRBzF3yv09Muhw
The Dickson Flyer of Conrad Rudolph can be viewed below.