The American West has been the subject of speculation, scrutiny, and debate for centuries, and the maps that follow give us a glimpse of that history. The first map featured here, for instance, takes us to the middle of the 16th century, several decades after Christopher Columbus insisted that he had reached the East Indies on his four voyages west from Europe. By the time this map was published, Europeans realized that he’d in fact encountered an entirely separate landmass—a western hemisphere. But the contorted shape of North America on the map reminds us just how little was understood about the scope and scale of the continent.
The limited knowledge of North American geography fueled hopes, even fantasies. In 1625, Henry Briggs mapped an easy “Northwest Passage” across the continent from the newly settled colony of Virginia to the riches of Asia. (How little was understood? Briggs introduced the unfounded claim that California was an island, a myth that would persist for decades.) William A. Jackson’s map identifying the most profitable places to dig for gold in Central California reflects the frenzied atmosphere of 1851 and the overnight growth of the Union’s newest state. The migration of Chinese miners to San Francisco in the aftermath of the gold rush led to a racial backlash shown in stark terms by the 1885 map of the city’s Chinatown.
The abundance of the West was restrained, of course, by the region’s aridity, which starkly contrasted with the environment east of the hundredth meridian. In 1890, John Wesley Powell used a brilliantly colored map to argue that the region should be organized not around a rectilinear grid but rather around watersheds, to maximize this precious resource. A few decades later, the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light demonstrated this scarcity to its customers by explaining that the growing demand for water had been met through the engineering feat of an aqueduct to the distant Owens Valley.
Finally, we zoom out to gain an aerial view of the West through the breathtaking charts made by artist Hal Shelton after World War II. Shelton’s images—designed for an era of commercial air travel—remind us that any attempt to make sense of the West must reckon with the sheer diversity of its topography and landscape.
Old Look at a New World
“Novae Insulae, XVII. Nova Tabula” (1540)
By Sebastian Münster
The German scholar Sebastian Münster made this map several decades after the voyages of Christopher Columbus, using the most advanced European knowledge about the New World. By this time, Europeans understood that this landmass was not Asia but a separate hemisphere, though the unrecognizable shape of North America reminds us that the Spanish and Portuguese explorers had riveted their attention on the Caribbean and South America in search of a passage to India. Notice that North America is drawn with an isthmus at its midsection, reflecting the new quest for a Northwest Passage and the fabled Sea of Verrazzano. Münster’s map shows the latest intelligence but also wild hopes for an easy route across North America, hopes that would endure until the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the early 19th century.
An Island in the Land
“The North Part of America” (1625)
By Henry Briggs
Mathematician Henry Briggs used this map to stoke investment and interest in the fledgling (and failing) Virginia Colony, framing it as the entry point to the imagined Northwest Passage across the continent. His map also records ongoing imperial rivalries: it warns against crossing the continent through the Spanish-controlled South and confidently represents the Saint Lawrence Seaway using knowledge gained by French explorers. For Briggs—an Englishman and an investor—the strategic path west was through Chesapeake Bay, for its headwaters would lead to a brief portage to Hudson Bay, from which there were (hopefully) several rivers running west to the Pacific Ocean. Briggs was also the first to speculate that California was an island, a fallacy that showed up on maps through the rest of the century and that is itself a reminder that the North American West—home to Indigenous nations and peoples—remained relatively unknown by European explorers well into the 18th century.
Going for the Gold
“Map of the Mining District of California” (1851)
By William A. Jackson
Just weeks after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between the United States and Mexico in 1848, rumors of gold in Central California began to spread. Soon, hundreds of thousands sought their fortune in the valley drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The region had been home to Indigenous tribes, Spanish missions, ranchos, and a few pueblos, but the gold rush brought mining camps, towns, and an extended network of roads. Within a few decades, the Indigenous population of California would be decimated. William A. Jackson, a mining engineer who had explored the region, designed this pocket map for miners. It was among the most comprehensive maps of its time (it even notes the recent discoveries of quicksilver south of San Francisco). Yet it was full of aspiration as well, presenting a neatly composed picture of orderly settlement that belied the chaos and fevered atmosphere of the mining camps themselves.
Roads of Racism
“Official Map of ‘Chinatown’ in San Francisco” (1885)
By Willard B. Farwell et al.
Among the most dedicated miners of California’s gold rush were Chinese immigrants, many of whom settled in San Francisco thereafter. In the economic downturn of the 1870s, they became scapegoats and the focus of a political backlash that culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This map was created as part of a “public health” investigation of the 15 square blocks known as Chinatown. But in fact, as the outline suggests, the true goal was to target the Chinese community. The map relentlessly focuses on vice, identifying prostitution, opium dens, and gambling houses. While the map (seen in detail on the next page) is presented as an authoritative—even attractive—urban plan, the racially charged message lurks just beneath the surface. And the larger effort to limit Chinese immigration laid the groundwork for more ambitious restrictions in the 20th century that echo down to our own day.
Thirst for Growth
“Arid Region of the United States Showing Drainage Districts” (1890)
By John Wesley Powell
Encouraged by the Homestead Act of 1862 and the expansion of western railroads, more than 300,000 Americans had flooded west by 1890. Among the few to challenge the buoyant hopes of large-scale farming in the arid region was John Wesley Powell, director of the United States Geological Survey. Many migrants assumed that streams would flow year-round, and competition over water led settlers to advance ever farther upward, into elevations that could not sustain agriculture. These worrisome trends prompted Powell to offer Congress this alternative vision of the West, one organized not around the grid but around the natural watersheds, which were divided further into regional communities (such as the Platte River Basin, shown in detail). The borders would enable individuals to collectively determine the use of their scarce water, as the Mormon settlements of Utah and Hispano communities of the Southwest did. Even as he offered this vision of a new West, Powell assumed the land was for American settlers rather than its Indigenous inhabitants.
Nevertheless, She Persisted
“Votes for Women a Success: The Map Proves It” (circa 1915)
By National Woman Suffrage Association
Below: “The Awakening” (1915)
By Henry Mayer for Puck
A striking characteristic of the women’s suffrage movement was the leadership shown by the western states and territories. The sparsely settled interiors of the West—driven by a need to attract settlement and an absence of long-standing political parties and traditions, among other reasons—led this movement, as evident in the poster of that era to the left. Of course, the map hides the fact that the massive geographic space of the West represented fairly few voters. Yet the image of a map turning white with the victories of suffrage caught on, becoming a viral meme of its time. The image below was designed to support the huge campaign to gain women voting rights in New York State in 1915. When that campaign failed, suffragists turned their attention toward a federal amendment, which ultimately won congressional support during World War I.
Drinking It In
“Why Not Free Water?” (1922)
By Department of Public Service, City of Los Angeles
In 1900, Los Angeles had 100,000 residents; within four years, that figure had doubled. How to meet the thirsty needs of this growing metropolis? Create a steady water supply from outside the arid region. The Owens River rises out of the eastern Sierra near Yosemite and flows south. In the late 19th century, the Paiute (Nüümü) who had farmed the river’s valley had been displaced by white settlers, who built towns like Bishop, Independence, and Lone Pine by relying on the river. When the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light (now known as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) began to buy local land and water rights to build a massive aqueduct to Los Angeles, the farms of the Owens Valley languished. Here, the City of Los Angeles uses the back of a monthly utility bill to explain to customers the dynamics that enable their city to grow so swiftly and relatively inexpensively—at a high cost, however, to the Owens Valley.
A Pilot’s-Eye View
“Air Maps of United Air Lines” (1949)
By Hal Shelton and Jeppesen Map Company
During World War II, illustrator Hal Shelton was working for the United States Geological Survey in a mountainous remote corner of Nevada. When Shelton noticed that many locals could not understand the traditional contour maps produced by the USGS, he decided to seek a more intuitive and meaningful way to represent topography. The results of his painstaking creative process are showcased in these two charts for United Air Lines (San Francisco to Denver and Seattle to Salt Lake City). Shelton took care to minimize the human presence on the land and presented terrain as it might be seen by the naked eye: forests, deserts, water, and snowcaps speak through shading and color. By showing us the vantage point of a pilot, Shelton brought maps closer to photographs by approximating the “look” of the land itself; long before the satellite imagery so familiar to us today, Shelton’s maps were so realistic that NASA used them to help identify landmarks in photographs taken from space.•
Susan Schulten is a historian who uses old maps to explore the past. Her 2018 book, A History of America in 100 Maps, demonstrates that whether they’re made for diplomacy or social reform, to encourage settlement or understand disease, maps reveal much about our history. Schulten teaches at the University of Denver and is working on a book about Richard Edes Harrison, the 20th-century artist whose unconventional maps introduced Americans to new understandings of world geography.
