Johnson’s California, Territories of New Mexico and Utah

Cartographer: A. J. Johnson and Ward, publishers (issued in Johnson’s New Illustrated Family Atlas, ca. 1864)

Year: 1862

This hand-colored atlas plate captures the Far West as it stood during the Civil War, just after the creation of Colorado Territory and the trimming of Utah to form the newly organized Nevada. Pink, blue, and green washes differentiate counties, while a bold magenta outline traces the striking diagonal eastern boundary of early Nevada and the stepped outline of Colorado. Wagon roads, emigrant trails, military forts, and the first overland mail route thread across the Great Basin and Mojave, and small type notes mining camps such as Virginia City, Aurora, and Prescott. Hachures render the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain relief, and faint grids show surveyed townships creeping up the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. Insets are absent, but a decorative vine border and engraved title typify Johnson’s mid-1860s atlas style. For researchers, the map snapshots volatile territorial boundaries and transport corridors on the eve of the transcontinental railroad’s completion.