Last updated: January 8, 2025
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Brunot Island
G.M.Hopkins & Co., 3/16/1905, University of Pittsburgh
On August 31, 1803, after a three-mile-long boat journey downstream from its Pittsburgh launch, the expedition made its first stop at Brunot Island. Captain Meriwether Lewis’s friend, Dr. Felix Brunot, ran a farm on the island until 1819. It remained a pastoral site for many decades, as subsequent owners continued to use it for farming. 4
Brunot Island later became the site of common carbon-releasing technologies that have driven climate change. In 1894, George Westinghouse bought the island and built a coal-fired electrical generating station. A large power plant has operated there ever since. From 1903 to 1914, automobiles raced on a dirt track that circled the island, foreshadowing the rise of a transportation technology that would become one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. 5
Citations:
4 NPS, “Brunot Island,” Pittsburgh to the Pacific: High Potential Historic Sites of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Trail, 2022, 17, https://www.nps.gov/lecl/getinvolved/upload/2022_LCNHT_HPHS_Report_508compliantUPDATE2.pdf; Meriwether Lewis, August 30, 1803 entry, in Gary E. Moulton, Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1803-08-30.
5 National Park Service, “Brunot’s Island, Part Two,” Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail, last updated December 17, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/articles/brunot-s-island-part-two.htm; Katie Blackley, “Brunot Island once hosted explorers, automobile races, and now, lots of wildlife,” 90.5 WESA Pittsburgh’s News Station, December 3, 2019, https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2019-12-03/brunot-island-once-hosted-explorers-automobile-races-andnow-lots-of-wildlife; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Carbon Pollution from Transportation,” last updated May 14, 2024, https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/carbon-pollution-transportation.