George Karl Ludwig Preuss (born 1803), Anglicized as Charles Preuss, was a surveyor and cartographer who accompanied John C. Fremont

John C. Frémont

John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...

 on his exploratory expeditions of the American west, including the expedition where he and Fremont were the first to record seeing Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe is a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the United States. At a surface elevation of , it is located along the border between California and Nevada, west of Carson City. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. Its depth is , making it the USA's second-deepest...

 from a mountaintop vantage point as they traversed what is now Carson Pass

Carson Pass

Carson Pass is the Sierra Crest mountain pass over which State Route 88 crosses. The historic pass was a point on the Carson Trail during the California Gold Rush and was used for American Civil War shipping to California until the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad...

 in February 1844.
He participated in expeditions until he reached the age of 50. One year later, in 1854, he committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

.

Pruess Lake

Pruess Lake

Pruess Lake is a small spring-fed lake in Snake Valley, Millard County, west-central Utah. It is just south of Garrison and north of Burbank. It was named after Charles Preuss, a cartographer who was on John C. Fremont's first and second expeditions...

 (sic

Sic

Sic—generally inside square brackets, [sic], and occasionally parentheses, —when added just after a quote or reprinted text, indicates the passage appears exactly as in the original source...

), in west-central Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

 (south of Garrison, Utah

Garrison, Utah

Garrison is an unincorporated town in Millard County, Utah, United States. It is home to a Utah Department of Transportation yard and office, but other than that, offers no services.- Geography :...

) is named after him.

His diary of the Fremont expedition was featured on a 2008 episode of This American Life

This American Life

This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...

. It contrasted Fremont's exuberance with Preuss' sober, often humorously melancholy opinions of the expedition. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/329/nice-work-if-you-can-get-it