Description

NOTE: The book from which this map was removed can   be seen at category BOOKS: “INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT DOCUMENTS 5. 1859-1852” The book and its map are priced together and are not sold separately.

PUBLICATION DETAILS: Lithy.by E. Weber & Co. Balto. Inset at top: “Profile of the travelling route from the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco.” 33 ½”h x 26 ½”w.  Map torn past left neat line.  Boundary lines hand colored in green.  Bound in Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, In Illustration of His Map of Oregon and California, by John Charles Fremont; Addressed to the Senate of the United States. Washington.

Printed by Tippin & Streeper. 1849. Thirtieth Congress, 2d Session. Ho. of Reps. Miscellaneous. No. 5. (Second Session: December 4, 1848, to March 3, 1849.) 40 pages plus Preiss map and eight additional maps. Preuss map now detached. This map was the first to use the name “Golden Gate” in reference to the San Francisco Bay. The map also identifies the location of numerous Indian tribes.

GOLD: “By virtue of a brief phrase, engraved twice on the map and most difficult to read without a hand lens, the map becomes the first to show, to a widespread readership, the region of the new gold strike in California. In the vicinity of Nueva Helvetia, on the Rio de los Americanos and the upper course of the Rio de las Plumas, appear the words ‘El Dorado or Gold Region’.  When the map first appeared with these words, suspicion grew that Fremont had mounted his ill-fated 1848-49 expedition to California in the full knowledge that gold had been found. Senator Benton, in what appears to be a perfectly true account of the matter, answered the charge in 1849: ‘In answer to your inquiry I have to say that it is totally false that Mr. Fremont knew anything about the gold mines of the Sacramento, or that he went back with any view to work them. He had started back [to California] before the first news of them came to the United States. … The gold region was marked on his map from information brought in by Lt. [Edward F.] Beale, of the Navy, after he was gone’.” (Jackson.)

This important and beautifully drawn map became the model for many of the later gold region maps.  The California portion is based on Frémont’s map of 1845, but the legend “El Dorado or Gold Region” has been added along the “Rio d. l. Plumas” (Feather River) and the “R. d. l. Americanos” (American River), which is shown flowing out of ‘Lake Bonpland’ (Tahoe).” (Wheat, Gold Region).

“By far the most accurate map of the Far West up to the time of its publication. Fremont was able to fill in many of the spaces that had been conspicuously blank on his previous map of the west…. The rapidly changing political character of the West is not neglected on the map. Eighteen forty-eight was a milestone year for establishing United States territories and boundaries, and the recognition of these most recent developments make the map an up-to-date document. ‘Oregon Territory’ established by Congress on August14, 1848, is clearly delineated, as are the boundaries with Mexico laid out by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Missouri Territory is also indicated, as was, for the first time on a published map, the presence of the Mormons in the Great Basin.” (Cohen).

FREMONT: JohnC harles Frémont or Fremont (January 21, 1813 – July 13, 1890) was an American explorer, military officer, and politician. Frémont was a native of Georgia. He opposed slavery. In the 1840s. He led five expeditions into the western states. Joseph Nicolas Nicollet 1786 – 1843) was a French geographer, astronomer, and mathematician known for mapping the Upper Mississippi River basin during the 1830s. Nicollet led three expeditions in the region between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, primarily in Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Frémont’s exploration work with Nicollet brought him in contact with Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. Benton invited Frémont tohis Washington home where he met Benton’s 16-year-old daughter Jessie Benton. A romance blossomed between the two; however, Benton was initially against it because Frémont was not considered upper society. In 1841, Frémont (age 28) and Jessie eloped and were married by a Catholic priest. Frémont and his wife Jessie wrote the Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1843), which was printed in newspapers across the country; the public embraced his vision of the west not as a place of danger but wide open and inviting lands to be settled.
 
During the Mexican–American War, he was a major in the U.S. Army and took control of California from the California Republic in 1846. Frémont was court-martialed and convicted of mutiny and insubordination after a
conflict over who was the rightful military governor of California. His sentence was commuted and he was reinstated by President James K. Polk, but Frémont resigned from the Army. Afterwards, he settled in California at Monterey while buying cheap land in the Sierra foothills. Gold was found on his Mariposa ranch, and Frémont became a wealthy man during the California Gold Rush. He became one of the first two U.S. senators elected from the new state of California in 1850. He was the first Republican nominee for president of the U.S. in 1856. He was founder of the California Republican Party when he was nominated but lost the election to Democrat James Buchanan.
 
PREUSS: George Karl Ludwig Preuss (1803–1854), anglicized as Charles Preuss, was a surveyor and cartographer who accompanied John C. Fremont on three of his five exploratory expeditions of the American west. He was born in Prussia n 1803. After studying the science of geodesy, he became a surveyor for the Prussian government. After moving to the United States in 1834 with his wife and children, he worked for the Coast Survey under German-born Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. He put Preuss to work on surveys along the East Coast. When his survey ended, Preuss found work with a mining company in western Maryland. He quit the company after the death of his child and applied for work with Hassler, but none was available.

 Preuss and Frémont met in December 1841 when the unemployed Preuss approached Frémont to solicit work. The only work Fremont had at the time was to complete the interpretation of the astronomical observations taken during Fremont’s last expedition with Joseph Nicollet. Hassler recommended 39-year-old Preuss to twenty-six-year-old John C. Frémont in 1841. Frémont was working on map data from his assignment with Nicollet’s 1839 Missouri Expedition, and was organizing plans for a government-sponsored
1842 expedition to the West. Frémont hired Preuss to handle astronomical observations, but Preuss said he was a topographer. Frémont agreed to do the observations for Preuss, who would do the topographical work and create the maps.

CONDITION: Short tear on binding edge. Fold lines. Clean, bright copy. Excellent condition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Cohen, Mapping the West, p 152, illustrated;

Jackson, Donald. The expeditions of John Charles Frémont: map portfolio;

Howes, F366;

Wagner-Camp, The Plains & the Rockies, 150:2;

Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, Vol. 3, pp. 35-62 (illustrated between pages 56 and 57),
map 559;

Wheat, Maps of the California Gold Region, 40.

QB079
Fremont Map