In 1875-76 the H.M.S. Alert, under the command of George S. Nares, wintered at Cape Sheriden, just west of the present-day weather station Alert (Map of northern Ellesmere Island). In April and May of 1876, sledge parties led by Lieut. Pelham Aldrich explored westward as far as Alert Point (Christie and Dawes, 1991).
The next traverse of the north coast was made by Lieut. Robert E. Peary in 1906, who pushed west past Aldrich's farthest point, to the northern tip of Axel Heiberg Island. Peary had wintered the Roosevelt at Cape Sheridan, as had Nares. In 1908-09 Peary returned to the north coast, for his bid towards (or to?) the pole from Cape Columbia. Depots were established by Peary's group as far west as Cape Fanshawe Martin, in support of the polar bid (Hattersley-Smith et al., 1955).
Comdr. Godfred Hansen (Royal Danish Navy) next visited the area, in 1920 (Hattersley-Smith et al., 1955). Hansen came over from Thule, Greenland by dog team, to establish depots in support of Roald Amundsen and the Maud, during the north polar drift.
Cape Belknap was approached from the east in 1948 by the U.S. Navy icebreaker Edisto and U.S. Coastguard icebreaker Eastwind, which deposited a cache for the future weather station Alert. Two years later, Alert was established just south of the cape.
In 1946 ice islands were discovered in the Arctic Ocean by aircraft (Hattersley-Smith et al., 1955). Research on the ice islands and their origin began shortly thereafter by the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Research Board of Canada. The first airplane landing on the Ellesmere Ice Shelf, near Ward Hunt Island, was made in 1952. Meanwhile, between 1950 and 1953, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) conducted a major air photographic program covering the Queen Elizabeth Islands (Dunbar and Greenway, 1956).
In 1953 and 1954, ice shelf research and scientific reconnaissance was conducted along the north coast by a cooperative venture between the Defense Research Board of Canada and the Geological Survey of Canada. The 1953 party traveled from Alert to Markham Bay, where survey poles were aligned in the ice shelf, for movement and ablation studies the following year (Hattersley-Smith et al., 1955). The 1954 expedition was based near Ward Hunt Island, through U.S. Air Force ski-wheel C47 aircraft support from Thule. During May, G. Hattersley-Smith and R.L. Christie traveled to the western end of the north coast (Lands Lokk), and conducted geological reconnaissance and glaciological observations on their return to Ward Hunt Island in early June (Christie, 1957). The ice shelf studies of 1953-54 indicated that no net accumulation had occurred on the ice shelf since 1906 (Hattersley-Smith et al., 1955). From 1958 to at least 1976, glaciological investigations continued at the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf and Ice Rise (Serson, 1979).
Details of exploration and fieldwork along the north coast of Ellesmere Island after 1954 will not be considered further here. With the advent of aircraft and snowmobiles, and logistical support by the Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP) of Energy, Mines and Resources Canada (beginning in 1958), activity along the north coast began to escalate.
The Taconite Inlet lakes region was visited for scientific purposes on at least three occasions, prior to 1990. Hans Trettin, of the Geological Survey of Canada, conducted geologic mapping around Lake C2 in 1965, on Bromley Island in 1966 and visited at least one locality in the Taconite Inlet area in 1977, 1980 and 1982 (Trettin, 1987a). Hattersley-Smith et al. (1970) obtained temperature and salinity data, and water samples, from Lake C1 in May of 1969. Lastly, Martin Jeffries made temperature measurements and obtained water samples from the lakes in 1984 (in litt. to R.S. Bradley).