1849 German Manuscript Map of California at the height of the Gold Rush

A most intriguing German-language c. 1849 California Gold Rush era manuscript map of Upper California. Although drawn by an unknown hand, the map offers a wealth of unique information ranging from early gold discoveries, mines, and indigenous settlements to the very unusual inclusion of the explorer's route of Jedediah Smith. While mysterious, the work suggests it was drawn by a potential German 49er for personal use.

Sources

The map is loosely derivative of the Eugène Duflot de Mofras map of 1844 - the best map of California that would have been available to the well-connected European. However, it further suggests a hodge podge personal effort to accumulate and correlate multiple sources of cartographic information about the largely unknown American west at the height of the Gold Rush.

A Closer Look

The work embraces modern-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. While the cartographer does not exhibit the hand of a practiced draughtsman, the map is painstakingly drawn and dense with detail. Textual content is added in a casual, natural hand, and often overlaps other text and geographical content, making the piece difficult to read in places. The cartographer took particular care to note gold discoveries (crossed shovels), missions (circles surmounted with crosses), and other settlements. Noted are the routes of notable explorers, including Eugène Duflot de Mofras, Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, Jedediah Smith, and John C. Fremont, as well as established routes westward, such as the Santa Fe Trail. So, too, are the sites of American Indian settlements. The boundaries here roughly conform to the 1828 Treaty of Limits, which essentially reaffirmed the 1819 Ames-Onis Treaty.

The California Gold Rush

The discovery of gold at John Sutter's mill by James Wilson Marshall (1810 - 1885) in January of 1848 was one of the most definitive moments in American history. Coming at the end of the Mexican-American War (1846 - 1848), the timing of the discovery could not have been more propitious. The combination of new seemingly unlimited territory and the lure of gold led to a stampede of adventurers, prospectors, merchants, and homesteaders eager for a new life on the frontier. The Gold Rush was not limited to Americans crossing the Great Plains. European, Australian, and even Chinese immigrants rushed into California hungry for their part of the great strike. This Great Migration transformed the United States in the span of just a few years from a former colony into an expansive transcontinental nation on the cusp of becoming a world power.

Publication History and Census

Although undated, the map can only have been drawn between the early days of the California Gold Rush in 1849 and the ratification of California as a state in 1850.