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Description

The Map Illustrating Captain William Warner's Discovery of An Early Route To California

Highly detailed and historical important map of Warner's Route, one of the most important early routes from San Francisco and the gold regions of California to Goose Lake and the Oregon Trail.

In June 1849 Warner was directed to lead a survey party along the Upper Sacramento River over the Sierras via the newly opened Lassen Cutoff. His goal was to find a railroad route to Oregon. He traveled north out of Benicia, up the Sacramento to Lassen's Ranch, beyond which he eventually found a workable pass for the railroad. Shortly after the discovery, Warner was killed in an Indian Ambush in the mountains. His diary was discovered by Lieutenant Robert Williamson, who used Warner's notebooks to prepare the official account of the discovery of the pass, etc.

The route discovered by Warner became one of the earliest routes to the gold regions, departing from the Oregon Trail in Idaho and heading southwest, and ultimately finding the Feather River and the Sacramento Delta.

On this map is marked the spot, east of Goose Lake, where Capt. Warner was killed by Indians on Sept. 26, 1849....[Warner] made extensive examination of routes along the Pacific and in the Coast mountains, from San Diego to San Francisco, and had nearly completed his map of this previously unknown section of country, where he was directed to make the exploration in the Sierra Nevada, on which he lost his life in an Indian ambush.

Wheat notes: "The report and a map of the route . . . were the first published documents to show any of the details of this rough country." The map retains importance, according to Wheat, "as giving the first information on some of the mountainous region northeast of the Central Valley, and as a source document for the Lassen Cutoff in 1849."

Reference
Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 700; Wheat, Maps of the California Gold Region, 182.