Johnson’s California, with Utah, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Cartographer(s): Alvin Jewett Johnson
Date: ca. 1864
Place: New York
Dimensions: 67.5 x 45.5 cm (26.5 x 18 in)
Condition Rating: VG

Out of stock

SKU: NL-01397 Categories: ,

Capturing the American Southwest during a period of transition and transformation near the end of the Civil War.

Details

An iconic map of the Civil War era, this is A. J. Johnson’s rendition of the American Southwest.

The map depicts a post-Mexican–American War Southwest, where the United States acquired vast territories from Mexico under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, including regions that are today’s California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 is also marked, solidifying the southern boundaries of Arizona and New Mexico.

It features key landmarks such as the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Rio Grande, and the Colorado River, and indicates various indigenous settlements, Spanish missions, frontier towns, military outposts, and trail routes like the Emigrants Trail. The old Pony Express and U.S. Mail Route is plotted.

Note especially the western portion of Arizona, which includes what is now southern Nevada, including Las Vegas.

Copious notes are included on the terrain and peoples of the region.

Cartographer(s):

Alvin Jewett Johnson

Alvin Jewett Johnson (1827 – 1884) was a cartographer and publisher based in New York known for his atlases produced during and in the immediate wake of the U.S. Civil War. Beginning his career as a bookseller and appears to have worked as an agent for the prominent map and atlas publisher Joseph Hutchins Colton. Johnson himself turned to map publishing in 1854 and by 1860 began publishing atlases. Successive editions of Johnson’s ‘Family Atlas’ are notable for tracing the westward territorial expansion of the country.

Condition Description

Discoloration and wear along fold line. Light Foxing.

References

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