Map of Sacramento River and Bay of San Pablo with Harbour of San Francisco by the U.S. Ex. Ex. 1841.

Description

The only known example of this separately-issued map. It appeared at PBA Galleries (San Francisco) in 2011, the sole recorded appearance of the map at auction or in the trade.

This is an 1841 Charles Wilkes map of the Sacramento River and San Francisco Harbor, surveyed during the landmark U.S. Exploring Expedition and issued in 1858 in an edition of just 100 copies. It constitutes a separately issued example, mounted on linen with green silk edges, of one of the rarest and most historically consequential maps of the American Pacific Coast. Wilkes surveyed this territory in 1841 when Upper California was still part of Mexico, seven years before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill transformed the region forever.

The Map in Detail

The main sheet depicts the Sacramento River tracing its course from the upper right of the composition down to its confluence with San Pablo Bay, which occupies the lower left with surrounding topography rendered in careful hill-shading. Depth soundings dot the waters throughout, and the sparse settlement of the interior reflects the near-emptiness of Mexican California in 1841 — among the few named places is John Sutter’s recently established settlement of New Helvetia, shown near the head of navigation on the Sacramento, founded just two years earlier on a land grant from the Mexican government and destined to become the epicenter of the California Gold Rush. A large inset in the upper left presents the Entrance to the Harbour of San Francisco, based upon the earlier survey of Captain Frederick William Beechey of the Royal Navy, whose 1826–27 hydrographic work of the Bay remained the most authoritative available to Wilkes when he arrived in 1841.

Historical Context

Charles Wilkes led the United States Exploring Expedition from 1838 to 1842, America’s first major government-sponsored scientific and naval circumnavigation, which surveyed vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean, charted portions of Antarctica, and produced a monumental body of hydrographic and scientific data. His 1841 survey of the California coast and the Sacramento River was conducted at a peculiar historical hinge point: the territory was nominally Mexican, lightly populated by a mix of Californio rancheros, indigenous peoples, and a handful of foreign settlers, among them Sutter.

Within a decade, the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush, and California statehood would transform everything the map depicts. The appearance of New Helvetia — Sutter’s Fort — on this chart, years before gold was discovered at his mill in January 1848, gives the map an almost eerie quality of anticipation.

Publication History and Census

This map was surveyed by Charles Wilkes during the U.S. Exploring Expedition in 1841 and first published in 1858 in Atlas Vol. II of Vol. XXIII of the Wilkes Expedition’s Hydrography — an edition of only 100 copies, of which 58 were distributed by the Department of State, presumably to foreign governments.

The present example appears to be a separately issued printing of the map, possibly predating the atlas publication, and is mounted on linen with green silk edges. Haskell records only the official issue, noting no evidence of any unofficial printing.