California in 1868 - San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury, Sacramento

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors published this map of the city's Outside Lands in 1868, lithographed by the prominent San Francisco firm of Britton & Rey to show the public reservations selected under the city's Order No. 800, the ordinance that set aside large undeveloped tracts west of the built-up city for parks, cemeteries, and other civic purposes. The committee overseeing this selection process, known as the Committee on Outside Lands, included members Charles H. Stanyan, A.J. Shrader, Beverly Cole, Charles Clayton, and Monroe Ashbury, and the map itself preserves a direct trace of their work: several streets in what would become the Haight-Ashbury district were named after these very committee members and appear labeled on this sheet. Held today in the collection of the San Francisco Public Library, this colored copy otherwise matches the firm's plain black-and-white edition of the same plan.

The Presidio Reservation is marked as one of the map's major set-aside tracts, its military grounds already established well before the Outside Lands planning process began. A Cemetery Reservation is designated separately, land set aside specifically for burial grounds as the city planned for institutional needs alongside its recreational ones. A large Park reservation, the tract that would soon become Golden Gate Park, is also delineated, marking the origin point of what would grow into San Francisco's signature public green space. Detailed street grid lines run throughout the plan, including the earliest labeled appearance of streets named for Stanyan, Ashbury, and their fellow committee members, a direct cartographic record of how a bureaucratic planning committee left its mark permanently on the city's map.

This map is a distinctive gift for a San Francisco family with ties to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood specifically, someone curious about the origin of the district's now-famous name, or a collector interested in the earliest planning stages of Golden Gate Park. Among the Vault's several San Francisco sheets, this 1868 Board of Supervisors map is unique for documenting the exact civic process, land committee, and named streets that gave rise to one of the city's most recognizable neighborhoods. It's available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.