A Map of the Rail Roads of Virginia Prepared Under the Direction of the Board of Public Works.

Description

This is a very rare 1858 large-format map of Virginia by Ludwig von Bucholtz. It is one of the very few railroad maps of the state that predate the U.S. Civil War.

The origins of this map lie with the paradigmatic 1826 map of Virginia by John Wood and Herman Bőÿe (often known as the ‘Boye Map’). Though impressive in its size (nine sheets) and detail, the map soon became outdated as the state’s infrastructure (roads, canals, and later railroads) expanded rapidly and new towns emerged in its interior. In 1823, the Commonwealth’s Board of Public Works elected a former French military officer, then teaching at West Point, Claudius Crozet (1789 – 1864), as its principal engineer, where, among other tasks, he was to update the Boye Map. The result was the 1848 ‘A Map of the Internal Improvements in Virginia.’

However, Crozet’s ‘Map of the Internal Improvements’ itself was quickly becoming outdated, particularly due to the frenetic pace of railroad construction in the subsequent years. For his map, Crozet had relied on two emigrant Hungarian army captains: Anthony Kanalassi and William J. Vaisz. When Kanalassi died in 1852, he was replaced by Ludwig von Buchholtz (here spelled ‘Buckholtz’, elsewhere spelled ‘Buchholtz’), another emigrant military officer, a German from Wurtemberg in this case. Buchholtz was given two major tasks: to update the Boye Map (using the original copper plates as dictated by the Virginia General Assembly), which came to be known as the ‘Bucholtz-Boye Map,’ and to update the ‘Internal Improvements’ map. 

The ‘Bucholtz-Boye Map’ published in 1859 became widely known as the go-to map of the state for both Union and Confederate commanders during the U.S. Civil War, despite its limitations due to the need to revise the original copper plates. Bucholtz’s update to the ‘Internal Improvements’ map, which drew on his work on the Boye map and was considered superior in some respects for its lithographic printing, was published in 1862 during the U.S. Civil War. Since it was not widely reproduced during the war for military use, as was the Bucholtz-Boye map, the Buckholtz ‘Internal Improvements’ map is significantly rarer. Rarer yet is the present map, which is, for all intents and purposes, a first edition of the ‘Internal Improvements’ map, published four years prior. Aside from railroads, it includes up-to-date information on towns and their boundaries, courthouses, canals, mines, and other details. Twenty-three railroads are listed in a table at the top-left with their track length, while a small legend beneath the table indicates the markings for railroads completed, in progress, or proposed.

Census and publication information

This map was prepared by Ludwig von Buchholtz and printed by Ritchie & Dunnavant in Richmond in 1858. It is quite rare, noted in OCLC (28135130) among the holdings of the University of Virginia, the Library of Virginia, and Duke University, and it has come to market only twice in the past twenty years.