Diagram Showing the Connection of the Central Pacific Rail Road with the Public Surveys (California–Nevada), 1867

Cartographer: Compiled in the Office of the Chief Engineer, Central Pacific Railroad; signed by S. S. Montague, Chief Engineer, and filed with the U.S. Surveyor General, 1867

Year: 1867

This working-scale location map plots the newly constructed Central Pacific main line from the Sacramento Valley across Donner Pass to the Truckee Meadows, draping the track over township-and-range squares of the federal land survey. A continuous dark line marks the railroad’s centerline, while faint dotted grids show six-mile townships awaiting patent under the Pacific Railroad Act land-grant scheme. Drainages, emigrant wagon roads, and summit profiles thread through the Sierra Nevada hachures, and the broad expanse of Lake Tahoe anchors the south edge of the sheet. Survey notes and approval stamps in the right margin document the line’s official acceptance for land-grant certification. Drawn at five miles to the inch, the diagram gave federal clerks and company engineers a common reference for selecting mineral and timber lands within twenty miles of the track. It offers researchers a precise snapshot of the railroad’s as-built alignment only months before the rails pushed east into Nevada’s desert basins.