A presentation based on this paper was given at the Western History Association Conference in Los Angeles, CA on October 26, 2023.

ABSTRACT: Charged by a hopelessly deadlocked Congress to “determine the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific,” the Army Corps of topographical Engineers fanned out across the trans-Mississippi West between 1853 and 1855 in the largest peacetime expeditionary force the United States had mounted prior to the Civil War. Unable to answer an essentially political question of where to route the railroad, the Pacific Railroad Survey expeditions, nevertheless played a crucial role in nineteenth  Century expansion and settlement. The young Army cartographer, 2nd Lieut. G. K. Warren, is rightly recognized for compiling the first accurate comprehensive map of the trans-Mississippi West, not only depicting the vast territory’s complicated physical geography but its complex human landscape. Warren’s observations from three expeditions he took deep into Nebraska Territory between 1855 and 1857 informed his knowledge of the topography and the indigenous people living there. His private journals, official reports,  cartographic work and interactions revealed both empathy toward the Native Americans as well as a cold-eyed analysis of how best to move them out of the way. Warren’s often contradictory and ambivalent stance, typical of the time, transformed his legacy from merely compiling the foundational of the trans-Mississippi West to creating a blueprint for expansion.

 

Read the full paper here: G. K. Warren and the Map that Changed America

Twenty-five or so years ago, I found myself in San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon with time to kill. I’d flown into the city that morning from Boston, travelling 2700 miles from one edge of the continent to the other in six-and-one-half hours for several days of business meetings and conferences. Thanks to the miracle of time zones, I still had a full afternoon to relax.

Bored with the tourist distractions of Ghirardelli Square, I stepped into an antique book and print shop to browse. In a bin of shrink-wrapped prints, I found a colored lithograph showing a mountain pass leading into a valley somewhere in the western United States. While I no longer remember the title, the legend on the back identified the print as one of the lithographs from the Pacific Railroad Surveys of 1853 – 1854 (PRRS), a moniker unfamiliar to me at the time. 

The proprietor explained that the lithographs were included in government reports following a series of expeditions to find a path for a transcontinental railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific. With that background, I pawed through the bin, finding several more Railroad Survey prints. They were all the same size, obviously cut from an oversized book. The colors were pale and the drawings, while skillfully drawn, they were not particularly masterful artworks; they were pre-photography illustrations of western landscapes.

Of course these were not pre-Columbian visions of a mythical American Eden, but depictions of what existed on the ground in 1853 – 1854, including Army forts, settlements, pueblos, Native American encampments, and the wilderness in between.

As I stood looking at those lithographs in Ghirardelli Square, I became haunted by the notion that I was looking through the eyes of an artist on scenes of the American West that simply no longer exist, a landscape on the cusp of change with the eventual coming of railroads and large-scale white settlement. I also felt I was looking at a world unknowingly hurtling toward the catastrophe of the Civil War.

As these explorers searched for a path to the Pacific, I wondered how they imagined the future of the world in front of them.

I have long regretted that I walked out of that San Francisco print shop 25 years ago without taking possession of even one print. But, no matter, because the images possessed me and led me onto a path of inquiry and research into a largely forgotten piece of our history.

© 2020, Brad Allen