Heading:
Author: Preuss, Charles
Title: Topographical Map of the Road from Missouri to Oregon, Commencing at the Mouth of the Kansas in the Missouri River and Ending at the Mouth of the Wallah Wallah in the Columbia, In VII Sections.... From the field notes and journal of Capt. J.C. Frémont, and from sketches and notes made on the ground by his assistant Charles Preuss
Place Published: Washington
Publisher:
Date Published: 1846
Description:

Lithographed map on 7 sheets, held together with pink paper strip at right margin. Lithographed by E. Weber, Baltimore. Each sheet 39.5x65 cm. (15¾x25¾"). Folded to 21x13 cm (8 ¼x5 ¼"). Custom chemise and slipcase. First Issue.

Preuss produced this landmark map, based on the great Frémont/Preuss map of 1845 but in much more detail over the area depicted, in response to a request by the Senate of the United States, under whose auspices it was published. Wheat remarks that the finished map "was a road guide for Oregon emigrants such as had never previously existed... The purview of each section is quite narrowly limited to the emigrant road, but the topography is developed in rather more detail than on the parent map. Owing to its rarity and to its having long stood in the shadow of the much more widely known and distributed Frémont map of 1845, Preuss's sectional map of 1846 has been insufficiently appreciated by students of Western history...." There are tables of meteorological observations and descriptive commentary on the map. Wheat illustrates all seven sections of the map. There were two issues of the map, the original 1846 issue, and that contained in the 1849 Rockwell report. This is the original 1846 separate issue, with the lithographer's imprint (E. Weber & Co., Baltimore) present, sheets III and VI properly numbered, etc. Graff 3360; Wagner-Camp 115 (note); Wheat Transmississippi 523.

Lightly foxed and edge worn, heavier to outer (seventh) sheet; creased from folding, some small separations along folds, minor loss on final sheet; very good.