George Montague Wheeler (October 9, 1842 – May 3, 1905) was an American pioneering explorer and cartographer, leader of the Wheeler Survey, one of the major surveys of the western United States in the late nineteenth century. Wheeler was born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, the son of John Wheeler and Miriam P. Daniels. He graduated from West Point in 1866, ranked sixth in his class, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the US Army Corps of Engineers. He first served in California from 1866 to 1871. In 1869 General Edward O. C. Ord sent him on a reconnaissance through the eastern Nevada.