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Description

Extremely example of the first edition Thayer, Bridgeman & Fanning's map of the United States, showing routes and distances to the Gold Regions of California, bound in to a Gazetteer published by the firm with maps of the States and Territories.

This very decorative map shows steam and sailing ships, sea routes to California, land routes of Emory, Gregg, Fremont, and other explorers. This rare map focuses mostly on the interest in "routes to California" generated by the Gold Rush. Cf. Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi 804 & Maps of the California Gold Region 258. Wheat lists the 1854 edition published by Ensign, Bridgman & Fanning, but was apparently unaware of this earler editon.

the 1854 edition listed by Wheat does not yet show the Gadsden Purchase. In the 1854 edition, three ships are shown, whereas the present map has four ships. Interestingly, this earlier edition has 5 ships.

While some writers have suggested that this map is a later edition of J.M. Atwood's map of similar title, published in 1851, it is clearly a different map, although it is quite likely that this map was modelled after Atwood's map. A copy of the Atwood can be seen here: /gallery/detail/20641

OCLC locates 2 examples of this edition of the map (Bancroft and UT Arlington).