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Scarce 1881 edition of Crofutt's Grip-Sack Guide of Colorado, complete with early Louis Nell map of the state.

First edition of Crofutt's Grip-Sack Guide, with Nell's map of Colorado and a profusion of wood engravings of Colorado towns and western scenes.

The map meticulously depicts the geographical and topographical details of the state, including mountain elevations and topography. Wagon roads, trails, and railroads both existing and proposed are depicted. Counties are shown in different colors. Nell worked on the 1871-1879 Wheeler Surveys and gained a significant amount of information from this work, which he ultimately employed in producing what is, without doubt, the best large format map of the state of the period and became a huge commercial success. Nell notes railroads, proposed railroads, wagon roads, proposed wagon roads, trails, county seats, post offices, villages, townships subdivided and surveyed, contour lines, military reservations, private grants, areas of each county, astronomical positions, arable lands, and a host of other details.

Nell succeeded Thayer as the most important map maker in Colorado and continued publishing maps until the early 1900s.

Louis Nell first came to the west in the mid-1870s as a member of Captain George Wheeler’s survey. Nell was so impressed by Colorado that he settled there and began to publish a series of detailed maps of the state.

Colorado Views, Bird's-eye Views, and Photographic Plates

The verso of the map sheet is illustrated with a handsome wood-engraved panorama of Leadville by the Muss Engraving Co., 535 Pearl St., New York. which is signed in the printing block by White. Next to the panorama is a wood engraving of an interior view of the dining car or "Hotel Car" of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway.

In addition to the Nell map there is a double-page Map of the Denver and Rio Grande Rail Way, Showing Stage Lines and all Principal Mining Camps and Pleasure Resorts in Colorado (between pages 56 and 57)

The book is filled with illustrations, mostly wood engravings of scenes in the West, especially Colorado.

Notable illustrations: a full-page photographic plate "Sectional View of Denver, looking west"; a photographic frontispiece plate of the "Belles of Colorado"; bird's-eye view of Pueblo; and an allegorical representation of "American Progress" with female figure soaring above a scene of western expansion with railroads, telegraph lines and emigrants heading west.

An essential map and book for Colorado collectors.