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Detailed map of the Transmississipi West, as it was known in 1795, based upon the General Map of North America from Winterbotham.
The map illustrated Lieuteant Warren's Memoir, as integrated into Volume XI of the Pacific Railroad Surveys, perhaps the single most important modern compilation of data on the Transmississippi West produced in the 19th Century.
The Pacific Railroad Surveys (1853-1855) consisted of a series of explorations of the American West to find possible routes for a transcontinental railroad across North America. The expeditions included surveyors, scientists, and artists and resulted in an immense body of data covering at least 400,000 square miles of the region which would come to be known as the Transmississippi West. These volumes constitute probably the most important single contemporary source of knowledge on Western geography and history, and their value is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of many beautiful plates, in color, of scenery, native inhabitants, fauna and flora of the Western country.
Published by the United States War Department from 1855 to 1860, the surveys contained significant material on natural history, including many illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. In addition to describing the route, these surveys also reported on the geology, zoology, botany, and paleontology of the land, as well as provided ethnographic descriptions of the Native peoples encountered during the surveys.
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