California & Utah Map 1856 Regional Print - Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara

Charles W. Morse ran his cerographic printing house from New York, and in 1856 his General Atlas of the World, published through Appleton & Company, carried this map of California with a large inset of Utah and part of New Mexico. The Morse family pioneered cerographic map printing in the 1840s with their American Atlas and Cerographic Bible Atlas, and this General Atlas was the last great folio work the family produced before the business wound down. The map shares the distinction, alongside Colton's contemporary map, of being among the earliest separate maps of California issued in a commercial atlas. Its treatment of the state captures California only six years after statehood, a period when the northern mining country was already well surveyed while the south remained sparsely organized and only loosely mapped.

Southern California is rendered in notably primitive form, with only San Diego, Los Angeles, Tulare, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties shown south of the Tehachapis, since San Bernardino County had not yet been carved out. Several wells appear scattered through the southeastern desert, an unusual inclusion for a commercial atlas map of this date. The country north of Tulare County is far more credible, reflecting better surveying: Lake Tahoe appears labeled simply as Mountain Lake, while Fort Bishop, Fort Miller, Fort Washington and an unnamed Indian fort are all marked east of the Sierra Nevada. The vast Tulare Lake, since drained for agriculture, still fills the southern San Joaquin Valley, and only 33 counties are shown across the entire state, a fraction of California's eventual total.

A map from California's first decade of statehood makes a natural gift for a family with roots in the Central Valley or the old mining counties, or for a San Diego or Santa Barbara transplant curious to see their corner of the state before it was fully carved into counties. Unlike our later 19th-century California county maps with their crowded borders, this 1856 Morse sheet captures the state in a rawer, sparser form, closer to the gold-rush era than to the railroad boom that followed. It's supplied unframed and available in a full range of sizes, from a small desk print to a large statement piece for an office or study.