California, Oregon, Washington, Utah and New Mexico in 1854 - Sacramento, Portland, Olympia, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe

Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co. of Philadelphia issued this sweeping map of the American West in 1854, part of the firm's continuation of S. Augustus Mitchell's widely circulated New Universal Atlas. Thomas, Cowperthwait had grown out of Philadelphia's flourishing mid-century atlas trade, and this sheet represents one of the last editions of the plate before it was completely re-engraved to extend further east into Colorado. Published just five years after the Gold Rush and shortly before the Gadsden Purchase, the map captures California as an established state surrounded by a vast, still largely unorganized expanse of federal territory stretching from Oregon and Washington in the north to Utah and New Mexico in the south.

The Bartlett and Graham survey lines trace the pre-Gadsden boundary with Mexico, while Kearny's Route, the Spanish Trail linking Santa Fe to Los Angeles, and Fremont's exploration routes mark the overland corridors that had carried American settlers, soldiers, and traders across the region during the preceding decade. The Oregon Route threads north toward Portland and Olympia, and the map notably includes an oversized Tule Lake with no sign yet of Lake Tahoe, a reminder of how incomplete western geographic knowledge remained even five years after statehood. Santa Fe and Salt Lake City anchor the map's southern and central territories, both already established centers of Spanish and Mormon settlement respectively, long before either New Mexico or Utah would achieve statehood.

This map is a striking gift for a family with roots anywhere across the early American West, for a transplant now settled in California or the Pacific Northwest, or for a collector of pre-Gadsden western territorial maps. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.