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Description

Scarce wood-engraved map of the overland routes to the West discussed in Marcy's The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-Book for Overland Expeditions, with Maps, Illustrations, and Itineraries of the Principal Routes Between the Mississippi and the Pacific (1859).

The map illustrates the routes across the northern Plains to the mouth of the Columbia, through the central Rockies to San Francisco, and south through Texas to southern California.

Marcy's Prairie Traveller was intended as an accessible account for those actually planning to travel to the West, and its cartography is concise and highlights aspects of Western geography that are not as obvious on the high-finish maps of the period.

Wheat notes that the folding map, "though rather crude... affords an excellent general view of the routes of travel just prior to the railroad building era..."

Despite the publisher's intention that the work be published in large numbers, the separate map remains rare on the market today.

Reference
Wheat Transmississippi 984