1847 Army Adjutant's Office Map of the California Coastline and its Army Forts

An early American map of the California coastline that predates the California Gold Rush.

This is an 1847 map of the California coastline from Sonoma to San Diego. Though sparsely illustrated, each of the major army forts along the coast are labeled, including Santa Clara, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Angeles (Los Angeles), and San Diego. The route to travel between these forts is illustrated by a dotted line. A table in the lower left corner gives the distances between these forts and the number of men stationed at each one and also notes that the Mormon Battalion is not included in the numbers of men stationed at the forts because their term of enlistment 'expires in July'. An inset map of Lower (Baja) California is situated in the lower right corner and illustrates the peninsula from north of Loreto to La Paz, where the U.S. Army maintained a fort defended by 111 soldiers.

Census and Publication History

This map was created by the Adjutant's Office in Monterey, California on or around June 19, 1847. Created three years before the admission of California as a state into the Union, this is possibly one of the earliest maps of the California coastline created in the United States. It also predates the California Gold Rush by six months. As this map is untitled, finding catalog entries for it in institutional collections is rather difficult, but we have been able to identify only three times it has come to the private market in the last fifteen years.

Cartographer

Peter Stephen Duval (1804 - February 8, 1886) was a prominent French-American Philadelphia lithographer. He immigrated to Philadelphia from France in 1831 to take a job as a lithographer at the Philadelphia firm of Cephas Childs (Childs and Inman), one of Philadelphia's first commercial lithographing firms. In 1834, Childs retired and Duval took over the business with the artist George Lehman, operating as Lehman and Duval. Duval bought out Lehman in 1837 and from that point forward operated as P. S. Duval's Lithographic Establishment, or just Duval's Establishment. In the 1840s, he became one of the first firms to introduce steam powered lithographic presses. In 1841 he became a naturalized U.S citizen. At one point he had over 30 pressers and employed one 70 artists and was one Philadelphia's largest lithographic printer. Over the course of the next 30 years, Duval would have several business partners including the Swiss-American engravers Charles and Frederick Bourquin (1808 - 1897). In 1857 his son Steven C. Duval joined the business. Peter Duval retired in 1869 but continued to be involved in his company until his death from an enlarged heart in 1886. Duval was a member of the local branches of the Freemasons and the Order of Odd Fellows in addition to being president of the Philadelphia's Lithographers' Association.   Further Details...

Source

United States Senate, 'Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the First Session...December 7, 1847.', 30th Congress, 1st Session, No.1 (Washington: Wendell and Van Benthuysen) 1847.    

Condition

Very good. Even overall toning. Light foxing. Light wear along original fold lines. Light creasing. Blank on verso.