Map of the Territories & Pacific States to Accompany “Across the Continent”

Cartographer: Prepared for Samuel Bowles’s travel book; engraved by J. H. Goldthwait and printed by George F. Stone, New York, 1865

Year: 1865

Issued for readers of Bowles’s best-selling account of his 1865 overland journey, this color-tinted map shows the West just after the Civil War. Pink, yellow, and green blocks mark the newest states and territories, including the trimmed boundaries of Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. Stage routes, emigrant trails, and finished segments of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads thread across the plains and Great Basin toward California. An inset at lower right focuses on California’s growing spiderweb of rail and wagon roads, centering the Sacramento hub. Mountain ranges are rendered with fine hachures, while rivers and forts help travelers follow Bowles’s narrative mile by mile. The sheet served both as a souvenir and a practical guide for prospective settlers planning their own transcontinental trip.