A. B. Rogers
American engineer (1829–1889)
Albert Bowman Rogers (28 May 1829 – 4 May 1889), commonly known as Major A.B. Rogers, was an American surveyor now best remembered for his discovery of the Rogers Pass in British Columbia, Canada. He also has the distinction of having Rogers Pass in the U.S. state of Montana named after him, following his description of the pass in 1887.
Early life
Born in Orleans, Massachusetts in 1829, he attended Brown University, but transferred after one year to Yale University, where he obtained a degree in Engineering. Rogers served with the U.S. Cavalry during the Indian Wars, attaining the rank of major during the 1862 Dakota Sioux uprising.
Surveys for the Canadian Pacific Railway
His initial engineering experience was primarily on the American prairies surveying for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Nevertheless, James Jerome Hill of the Canadian Pacific Railway hired Rogers in April 1881 to find a rail route through the Selkirk and Rocky Mountains. Rogers carefully studied the reports of earlier surveyors, particularly those of Walter Moberly from 1865. Moberly's assistant Albert Perry had previously described the approach to a potential pass from the Columbia River along the Illecillewaet River. In later years, Moberly claimed the pass should have been named Perry's Pass.
“A. B. Rogers” enters the record as american engineer (1829–1889). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rogers, American and engineer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“A. B. Rogers” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Rogers, American and engineer provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2637705. VIAF identifies the subject as 75376944. The Library of Congress control number is n87851772. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1829, 1889, 1887 and 1862.
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This entry incorporates text from “A. B. Rogers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.