FOREWORD - California Map Society

FOREWORD
One oj the good results oj the discovelY oj the gold mines, will be that the vast regions
west oj the Rochy Mountains, north oj Mexico, and south oj the Colwnbia Rivel;
will very SOOI1 be thoroughly explored. Every river and stream, mountain and hill,
valley and calion, prairie and plain, will be explored, and accurately laid down upon
the maps. More will be done this year than has been done Jor three centuries, to
obtain aCCLlrate geographical hnowledge oj the countl)'.
REV. SA M U EL C. D A MO N , The Friend, 15 November 1849
the sesquicentennial of that great stampede to
4\1 California by gold-seeking adventurers known as Forty-Niners. James Wilson
Marshall's discovery of gold on the American River on 24 January 1848, precipitated
a worldwide epidemic of gold fever and everyone talked of "fortunes for the mil­
lions." News spread slowly, but by the time 1849 dawned , the intense excitement had
spread across the continents. As one wisecracking journalist put it: "A grain of gold
taken from the mines became a pennyweight in Panama , an ounce in New York and
Boston, and a pound nugget in London." This new EI Dorado, however, lay in one of
the most remote spots on the globe, and those who could figure out how to get there
first would become rich. Rev. Samuel C. Damon, a missionary from Hawaii when vis­
iting the diggings in 1849 , remarked that the interior of Africa was better known to
the civilized world and that there were "no good maps of California ." In response ,
publishers spewed out all manner of guidebooks and travel accounts to this land of
golden dreams. As Carl Irving Wheat , the great cartobibliographer, points out, the
Gold Rush in terms of printer's ink has seldom been matched. Words were one thing ,
but to see "Kaliforny" on a map gave a reality to the whole frenzy, and Argonauts
snatched up maps as fast as if they were gold nuggets.
The great Gold Rush of 1849 certainly demonstrates the importance of maps to
our state's rambunctious past, and for this reason, the California Map Society gener­
ously decided to publish a cartobibliography of the most important and fascinating
maps documenting the development of the Golden State. What a joyous way to com­
memorate California's defining event. But, what a daunting task this represented'
Since 1540, thousands of maps have been dravvn and published depicting California,
and to select a symbolic 49 presented as great an intellectual challenge as it was for
the gold rushers to cross the Humboldt Sink. As will be seen by a careful reading of
California 49, the California Map Society chose wisely. Here is the state's history from
a mythological land imagined by European geographers to its delineation from the
cosmos via satellite. Every major phase of Queen Calafia's domain is captured cano­
graphically. This publication will serve as a powerful and frequently consulted
companion to the many reference works that grace the shelves of our private and
institutional collections.
Making a selection of Significant maps and attaching a number to it, of course,
follows in the tradition of that gentle form of passion known as bibliomania. The
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Grolier Club in New York over the generations published highly acclaimed bibliogra­
phies with such titles as One HLmdred Influential American Boob Printed before 1900.
When it comes to California , Phil Townsend Hanna, himself an imaginative historian
and bibliophile, asked three great titans of Californiana, Leslie E. Bliss, Henry R.
Wagner, and Robert E. Cowan, to join him in submitting their own list of "the twenty
rarest and most important books dealing with Californiana. " Townsend published his
compilation in 1931 and called it Libras Californial1os or Five Feet of California Books.
Perhaps California 49 should have as a subtitle "a drawer of California maps." No list,
however, garners greater recognition than the Zamorano 80. A Selection of
Distinguished California Boo)zs Made by Members of the Zamorano Club. When it first
rolled off the presses in 1945, the list provoked much heated discussion and lively
debate concerning the choices made. It still does to this day. Nonetheless, the
Zamorano 80 represents the benchmark by which serious Californiana collections are
judged. No doubt California 49 will elicit similarly friendly but challenging debate
about what has been excluded. But the end effect will be inclusive: these forty-nine
cartographic moments will point the way to greater inquiry, and out of debate, will
create an even fuller understanding of the mapping of California.
This sesquicentennial compendium builds upon and draws upon an extraordi­
nary legacy. Because the colorful and sometimes controversial cartographic history of
California has generated so much interest , a pantheon of scholars including Henry R.
Wagner, Carl 1. Wheat , and Dale Morgan devoted much of their energy to the subject.
It is no accident that the), also stand as some of the most revered names in California
bibliography. Wagners Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America, Wheat's Maps
of the California Gold Region and his monumental Mapping the Transmississippi West,
Wheat and Morgan's Jedediah Smith and His Maps of the American West, combined
with Glen McLaughlin's The Mapping of California as al1 Island and Neal Harlow's
majestic series on San Francisco Bay and the pueblo lands of Los Angeles and San
Diego, endowed California with an unparalleled cartographic bibliography. Their
scholarship provided the foundation for this book and a solid rationale for what the
California Map Society decided to feature.
Each map represents an important stage in California's development and gives
visual and documentary meaning to the history of California. Additionally, the great
names of travel writing and map creation grace this list including Ramusio, Ortelius,
Hondius, Sanson, Delisle, Kino, Vancouver, and Fremont, to name just a few. The first
map selected, a 1540 woodcut by Sebastian Munster, shows the land mass of the
Americas just two years before the voyage of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and the first
European landfall into present-day California. With this point of reference, California
49 traces the evolving picture when Domingo del Castillo included it as a peninsula
jutting out from the mainland in 1541 to that fantastic era when cartographers drew
California as an island and sailors boasted that they could circumnavigate this exotic
land. Many of these examples are California firsts: The first to show the peninsula of
Baja California. The first to include such prominent place names as Sierra Nevada and
the first to give prominence to the insularity of California. Through the study of these
depictions, we share with the European mind the mystery of this terra incognita, the
search for the Seven Cities of Gold and the Straits of Anian, and we appreciate the
achievements of those brave seaman who explored her coastline, from Cabrillo to Sir
Francisco Drake to Sebastian Vizcaino and Miguel Costanso. When that tireless jesuit
explorer Eusebio Kino floated across the Colorado Riv er on a raft and drew up his
findings , the myth of California as an island was shattered forever. A mythic land ,
through scientific investigation and uncommon valor, slowly became real.
The Spanish Entrada in 1769 by Gaspar de Portola and Franciscan junipero
Serra, the establishment of the mission chain and presidios, and juan Bautista de
Anza's great overland trek attest to Spain's relentless det ermination to colonize its farflung empire. The place names bestowed by the Spanish serve as a rich reminder of
their presence and their willingness to explore. A fascinating subplot centered on the
discovery of San Francisco Bay and the penetration of its narrow, fog-shrouded
entrance. The cartography produced by George Vancouver and a manuscript map of
Russian settlement clea rly demonstrated that more than just Spai n had an interes t in
California. One myth persisted well into th e nineteenth century: A se ries of rivers
flowed from the east through California to the sea. It was hoped that an inland pas­
sage from the coas t to th e interior could be found. From the eas t, mountain men and
fur trapp ers like jedediah Smith rambl ed through California, and slowly an under­
standing of the vast interior with its valleys, m o untains , and deserts develo ped .
Foreign visitors also found the coastal areas dotted by th e ranchos and pueblos of the
Californios. These regal rancheros gave us perhaps the mos t charming of all maps
associated with California history, the picturesque but imprecisely' drawn disenos.
California, in the eyes of the growing American nation, excited coveto us interest, and
ambitious pathmarkers like john C. Fremont fuel ed that land lust by adding consid­
erably to the geographic knowledge of this verdant territory. California's transition
from a distant department of Mexico to the thirty-firs t star o n th e America n flag is
superbly documented by publisher Samuel Augus tus Mitchell and topographical
engineer Major W. H. Emory.
When the world rush ed in to find gold on the banks of the Sacramento , the
importance of maps exploded. Now an entire globe studied charts of this remote ,
mineral-rich land. While not known for their accuracy, the works of U.S. Consul
Thomas Oliver Larkin and Captain William jackson gave Argonauts a rough idea of
the rivers and streams tha t washed the gold out of the Sierra. Within an ex traordi­
narily short time, California sprouted instant ci ties, and William Mars ton Eddy's
1851 map of San Francisco provided an excellent example of how early surveyors set
the basic pattern that direc ted the growth of the Go ld Rush city. To the south, Edward
O. C. Ord drew the first map of that "Queen of the Cow Counties," Los Angeles . Ord's
map touched off the first real estate boom in Southern California. As the state beca me
more populated and its infrastructure more complex, th e demand for accuracy in te n­
sified. One of th e more frustrating stories of th e 1850s was the quest by the new state
government for an accurate "o fficial map " as illustrated by George H . Goddard's
large-scale map of 1855 . Despite its superiority to anything else and its recommended
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purchase by the State Surveyor General, the State Legislature rejected it. Desiring to
salvage his work , Goddard responded by going commercial, and Britton and Rey of
San Francisco published a reduced-scale version in 1857. State Geologist josiah D.
Whitney's use of triangulation not only brought accuracy but also filled in the blanks
and featured such geologic landmarks as high mountains and the Yosemite Valley.
Transportation has always been a key to this elongated state. California's struggle to
link nself with the rest of the country is documented with Theodore Judah's 1854
map showing the route of the first operating railway in California that led, of course,
to the piercing of the High Sierra by the steel rails of the Central Pacific Railroad.
California's love affair with the automobile and individualized transportation is sym­
bolized by a strip map from Los Angeles to Pasadena published in 1908 by the
Automobile Club of Southern California. Fortunately too , California 49 explores the
modern era with a series of maps featuring the state's current problems and promise:
vegetation, water, population, and ethnic distribution , land use and earthquakes.
All students of California history will enjoy California 49. The commentaries
supplied by a variety of scholars and collector-scholars provide much more than dry,
truncated annotations. While concise, these commentaries bring to life the challenges
of the explorers and surveyors who charted the California landscape. The opinions of
earlier cartohistorians are weighed and accepted or rebutted. The commentaries give
context to the map as individually important or as representative of a class of like
maps. A full cartobibliographic description of each map rounds out the entries.
An erudite committee composed of Alfred 'vV Newman , Warren Heckrotte , Dr.
Gerald Greenberg , Glen McLaughlin, and Dr. Norman j. W. Thrower had the joyous
task of setting the parameters and making the selection. Following the tradition of
Wagner, Wheat , and Morgan, they express a consuming interest for their subject by
forming serious personal collections or by developing institutional holdings, by thor­
oughly investigating the history of each of their maps , and by taking great pleasure in
sharing their considerable knowledge , and by infecting others with their "cartoma­
nia ." In many respects, it is amazing that they started with a short list of only 103
maps They qUickly whittled these down to Sixty-three and then forty-nine. The
alacrity with which this winnowing process took place could only have been achieved
by a committee in possession of a wide-ranging knowledge, rigorous discipline , and
a generously cooperative spirit. Rejection of a particular title or favorite must have
generated much pain , and the temptation to expand must have been overwhelming.
The California Map Society deserves our enthusiastic applause for contributing
to California's sesquicentennial commemoration a gift of lasting value. Perhaps the
Rev. Samuel C. Damon would have been pleased by the map-making progress made
in the last 150 years.
GARY F. KURUTZ
California State Library &
The Book Club of California