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Description

Scarce early map of the City of San Francisco with a smaller map of San Francisco and Vicinity below.

The city map is divided into 12 Precincts and shows Railroads, streets, wharfs, churches, parks, hospitals, the Jewish Cemetery, etc. The second maps extends south to Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Merced Counties and North to Marin, San Joaquin and Calaveras Counties, and shows towns, roads, railroads, mountains, rivers, etc.

The map is not listed in Rumsey. It seems to have been issued in a German language guidebook for San Francisco or California, but likely published in America, given the use of this rare Colton map.

G.W. & C.B. Colton Biography

G. W. & C. B. Colton was a prominent family firm of mapmakers who were leaders in the American map trade in the nineteenth century. The business was founded by Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800-1893) who bought copyrights to existing maps and oversaw their production. By the 1850s, their output had expanded to include original maps, guidebooks, atlases, and railroad maps. Joseph was succeeded by his sons, George Woolworth (1827-1901) and Charles B. Colton (1831-1916). The firm was renamed G. W. & C. B. Colton as a result. George is thought responsible for their best-known work, the General Atlas, originally published under that title in 1857. In 1898, the brothers merged their business and the firm became Colton, Ohman, & Co., which operated until 1901, when August R. Ohman took on the business alone and dropped the Colton name.