Messing with Maps: New Mexico 1859 edition

I must confess: I am a map junkie. I can stare at a map for hours on end. I do it to find possible hikes or runs, bikes or drives. I do it to jog my memory of Place. I do it to virtually travel to new landscapes I’ve never visited and maybe never will. I do it knowing full well that a map can never live up to the place it depicts, that the cartographer imposes a linear, two-dimensionality onto a curvy, three-dimensional world.

I’m fond of all sorts of maps, from tattered topos to high-definitition satellite images to Rand McNally road atlases. But I’m most enamored with older maps, ones from the early days of European and white settlement in the Western U.S. and, especially, the Four Corners region. They provide a sort of snapshot of that moment in time, revealing how the colonizers (usually they and the mapmakers are one and the same) saw or understood (or failed to understand) the landscape. Even the blank spaces, sometimes labeled “UNEXPLORED,” reveal something about the Place: It was too remote, too rugged, too dangerous, too lacking in natural resources to risk sending the surveyors or mappers or settlers in there.

Today’s map, seen in its entirety above, is titled: “Old Territory and Military Department of New Mexico, compiled … chiefly for military purposes under the Secretary of War 1859.” It was partially revised and corrected to 1867. I’ve zoomed in on specific portions of the map below to help us all focus on some of the map’s idiosyncrasies. If the images are too small in your email browser, then go to the post at LandDesk.org, click on the image, and zoom in.

Note the “UNEXPLORED” label, which applies to virtually all of southern Utah and northern Arizona. The details here are scant, as one might expect, even though the Escalante-Dominguez Expedition came through here in 1776 and mapped it (we’ll cover that in a future “Messing with Maps.”) Note how jagged their route is, an indicator of how rugged the landscape is along what is now the Arizona-Utah border. One of the non-blank spaces in all that blankness is the “Cañon Colorado” in what is now the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. This shows up because Capt. John Macomb visited it in 1859 and was, frankly, disgusted, calling it “a worthless and impracticable region.”

This is northwestern New Mexico. Parts of it are very accurate, such as the path of the San Juan River and its tributaries (Farmington is located where the La Plata and Animas Rivers run into the San Juan). And other parts, not so much: Note how the Chaco River runs northwesterly through Chaco Canyon before veering sharply to the northeast, meeting up with what appears to be today’s Kutz Wash before joining the San Juan near present-day Bloomfield. In fact, the Chaco River joins the San Juan near the “NEEDLES” label north of “Cayetano Mt.” Either the Needles or Cayetano Mt. must refer to Shiprock. Any ideas there?

While there is no “unexplored” label covering the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, they were, indeed, “unexplored” by Euro-Americans as of 1859. Even the Spanish colonizers avoided the area, which was firmly Ute territory at the time, despite the promise of gold and silver here. The blue labels show approximate locations of present-day towns. Note the Gunnison River is labeled as the Grand River here, though that’s actually the name given to the Colorado River further north and for which Grand Junction was given its name. The Baker Party didn’t make its way into what is now Silverton until 1860, the year after this map was originally made (they fled in 1862). Though the map was updated in 1867, the cartographer apparently missed out on Baker’s exploits in the area.

Southern Nevada was somewhat of a crossroads back in the day. Hoover Dam would later be built at Long Rapid, which was also the “Present Head of Navigation” for the Colorado River. Note Red Lake near the center of this image. It’s now dry, but appears to have been a viable lake — with water and everything — back then. It’s interesting, too, to see how today’s highways and byways match up with the old ones. Interstate 40, for example, pretty closely hews to Beale’s Waggon Road Route 1858.

What is now Phoenix, and was then Maricopas and Pima Villages, was also a major crossroads. Note Tucson at the bottom of the image just right of center.

I’d love to hear what stands out about this map for you. Do you recognize springs or certain places? Do you see things on the map that no longer exist? Anything surprise you about what the cartographer knew or didn’t know back then? Put your thoughts in the comment section below!