John Mullan (July 31, 1830 - December 28, 1909) was an American soldier, explorer, civil servant, and road builder. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and at the early age of 16 earned his B.A. at St. John's College in Annapolis. He would go on to attend West Point in 1852, focusing his studies on engineering, mathematics, and science.[11] West Point was then the nation's preeminent engineering school, and learning to navigate using a compass and odometer. He graduated to a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army in 1852 and was assigned to the 1st Artillery Regiment in San Francisco. From there, he would join Isaac Stevens' Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. As part of his work for the survey he explored western Montana, southeastern Idaho, discovered and named Mullan Pass, participated in the Yakima War, and led the construction crew which built the Mullan Road in Montana, Idaho, and Washington state between the spring of 1859 and summer of 1860. He wrote Report on the Construction of a Military Road from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton (1863), and Travellers' Guide to Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, via the Missouri and Columbia Rivers (1865). More by this mapmaker...

Edward Freyhold (May 12 1824 - November 29 1892, born Eduard Otto Gotthilf Julius von Freyhold) was a German-born American cartographer, topographer and draughtsman. Nothing is known about his education and training, but his long association with fellow German immigrant Julius Bein suggests that from an early age he worked with that map publisher, perhaps as an apprentice. He served in the Pennsylvania Infantry from 1861 to 1866, and his skills as a draughtsman and mapmaker were for decades placed at the service of his adopted homeland. Freyhold became a prominent topographer and draughtsman whose work can be found on numerous maps of the West for the government and the railroads, appearing in print between 1853 and 1879. Map scholar Carl Wheat rhapsodized about his work:

Edwin (sic) Freyhold… was an unrivaled expert in this type of work. His penned originals are almost unbelievably delicate, and must be examined with a powerful magnifying glass to be appreciated... Freyhold was later the author of a beautiful map of the Transmississippi West published in 1868. It contains all the material he could locate resulting from explorations and surveys made subsequent to those used by Warren. No other maps of this region, even those of the present day, seem superior to these two great maps in workmanship. ... A Freyhold manuscript map, however, is... something of great beauty.

Julius (Julien) Bien (September 27, 1826 - December 21, 1909) was a German-Jewish lithographer and engraver based in New York City. Bien was born in Naumburg, Germany. He was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts, Cassell and at Städel's Institute, Frankfurt-am-Main. Following the suppression of the anti-autocratic German Revolutions of 1848, Bien, who participated in the pan-German movement, found himself out of favor in his home country and joined the mass German immigration to the United States. Bien can be found in New York as early as 1849. He established the New York Lithographing, Engraving & Printing Company in New York that focused on the emergent chromo-lithograph process - a method of printing color using lithographic plates. His work drew the attention of the U.S. Government Printing Office which contracted him to produce countless government maps and surveys, including the Pacific Railroad Surveys, the census, numerous coast surveys, and various maps relating to the American Civil War. Bien also issued several atlases both privately and in conjunction with a relation, Joseph Bien. At the height of his career Bien was elected president of the American Lithographers Association. After his death in 1909, Bien's firm was taken over by his son who promptly ran it into insolvency. The firm was sold to Sheldon Franklin, who, as part of the deal, retained the right to publish under the Julius Bien imprint. In addition to his work as a printer, Bien was active in the New York German Jewish community. He was director of the New York Hebrew Technical Institute, the New York Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and president of the B'nai B'rith Order. Learn More...