The Unfinished Wheeler Atlas of the American West: Reassessing the Value of a Nineteenth-Century Mapping Project

ABSTRACT

The U.S. government sent four major groups of explorers into the American West in the late nineteenth century. The United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, more commonly known by the name of its director, George Montague Wheeler, was among these. This survey had the goal of mapping the West and producing an atlas of 143 sheets covering the United States west of the Mississippi River. Though 49 maps were completed, no final atlas was ever published and government surveyors criticised the work as obsolete and inadequate. Wheeler's mapping marked an important development in the mapping of the West, however, and provides a useful resource for understanding land use and settlement change in this region.

Le gouvernement américain envoya en mission quatre importants groupes d’explorateurs dans l’Ouest américain à la fin du XIX^e siècle. La mission des United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, plus connue sous le nom de son directeur, George Montague Wheeler, en faisait partie. Cette mission avait pour objectif de cartographier l'Ouest américain et de produire un atlas de 143 feuilles couvrant les États-Unis à l'ouest du fleuve Mississippi. Bien que 49 cartes aient été réalisées, aucun atlas final ne fut jamais publié et les géomètres gouvernementaux critiquèrent le travail comme étant obsolète et inadéquat. La cartographie de Wheeler a cependant marqué un développement important dans la cartographie de l'Ouest et constitue une ressource utile pour comprendre l'utilisation des terres et les changements de peuplement dans cette région.

El gobierno de Estados Unidos envió cuatro grandes grupos de exploradores al oeste americano a finales del siglo XIX. Entre ellos se encontraba el United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, más conocido por el nombre de su director, George Montague Wheeler. Esta institución tenía como objetivo cartografiar el Oeste y producir un atlas de 143 hojas que cubriera la parte de Estados Unidos al oeste del río Mississippi. Aunque se completaron 49 mapas, nunca se publicó el atlas final y los topógrafos del gobierno criticaron el trabajo por considerarlo obsoleto e inadecuado. Sin embargo, el trabajo de Wheeler marcó un avance importante en la cartografía del Oeste y constituye un recurso útil para comprender el uso de la tierra y los cambios de los asentamientos en esta región.

Die US-Regierung schickte im späten 19. Jahrhundert vier große Forschergruppen in den amerikanischen Westen. Dazu gehörte auch das United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, besser bekannt unter dem Namen seines Direktors George Montague Wheeler. Ziel dieser Vermessung war es, den Westen zu kartieren und einen Atlas mit 143 Blättern zu erstellen, der die Vereinigten Staaten westlich des Mississippi abdecken sollte. Obwohl 49 Karten fertiggestellt wurden erfolgte nie eine abschließende Publikation in Atlasform und Regierungsvermesser kritisierten die Arbeit als veraltet und unzureichend. Wheelers Kartierung stellte dennoch eine wichtige Entwicklung in der Kartierung des Westens dar und ist eine nützliche Quelle für das Verständnis der Landnutzung und der Siedlungsveränderungen in dieser Region.

KEYWORDS:

• George Wheeler
• USGS
• topographic map
• atlas
• hachures
• contours
• shaded relief
• exploration
• American West
• nineteenth century

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These expeditions have been well covered in several standard works, including: Richard A. Bartlett, Great Surveys of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980); William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962).

2 Thomas G. Manning, Government in Science: the U.S. Geological Survey 1867–1894 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), 42–59.

3 Eric Bergland, ‘Preliminary report upon the operations of Party No. 3, California Section, Season of 1875–’76, with a view to determine the feasibility of diverting the Colorado River for purposes of irrigation,’ in Annual Report Upon the Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, and Montana, Appendix JJ, ed. George M. Wheeler, within Executive Documents of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Forty-Fourth Congress. 1876–’77 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office (hereafter GPO, 1877), 337–38.

4 Paula Rebert, La Gran Linea: Mapping the United States- Mexico Boundary, 1849–1857 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 16–40.

5 J. B. Krygier, ‘Envisioning the American West: Maps, the representational barrage of nineteenth-century expedition reports, and the production of scientific knowledge,’ Cartography and Geographic Information Systems 24, no. 1 (1997): 27.

6 William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863 (Austin: Texas State Historical Commission, 1991), 262–304.

7 Among the achievements of the Pacific Railroad Surveys was the Map of the Territory of the United States from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, drawn by Gouverneur Warren in 1857 (Washington, DC: War Department). This map, at a scale of 1:3,000,000, was then the best comprehensive view of the West, though detail was sparse in many areas. John Rennie Short, Cartographic Encounters: Indigenous Peoples and the Exploration of the New World (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 103–09.

8 Robert W. Karrow, Jr., ‘George M. Wheeler and the geographical surveys west of the 100th meridian, 1869–1879,' in Exploration and Mapping of the American West: Selected Essays, ed. Donna P. Keep (Chicago: Speculum Orbis Press, 1986), 146–47; Doris Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler: The Man and the Myth (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 59. Bartlett and Goetzmann have maps showing the area each survey was working in. Bartlett, Great Surveys, xv; Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, 544.

9 Standard works on Powell include: Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (New York: Dover Books, 1953); Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); John Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons (New York: Dover Press, 1875).

10 James G. Cassidy, Ferdinand V. Hayden: Entrepreneur of Science (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 116–21; William Henry Jackson, Time Exposure: The Autobiography of William Henry Jackson (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 186–203; Joni Louise Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1992), 86–88.

11 Ferdinand Hayden, Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado and Portions of Adjacent Territory (New York: Julius Bien, 1877); John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States (Washington: GPO, 1878).

12 Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 78; Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, 487–88.

13 Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, 126–27, 157, 241, 271; Worster, A River Running West, 207–08, 318.

14 Bartlett, Great Surveys, 333–72; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 1–80; Wilford’s history of cartography contains eleven pages on Powell’s work and gives him credit for the topographic mapping of the West, but only mentions Wheeler once. John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers, Revised Edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 241–45, 247–52.

15 Wheeler’s records remained with the War Department until 1931 when they were transferred to Stanford University. The USGS had little interest in the Wheeler records and declined to receive them, while showing great appreciation for records of the other surveys. The War Department had apparently lost or destroyed many of these records and was allegedly a week away from disposing of the remainder when a chance encounter by Francis Farquhar, an amateur historian, resulted in the records being shipped to Stanford University. Some notebooks and records were disposed of by Stanford, while others were transferred to other institutions, among them the University of Colorado and the National Archives. No comprehensive inventory of remaining records and where they are located exists. C. E. Dewing, ‘The Wheeler Survey Records: a Study in Archival Anomaly,’ The American Archivist 27 (1964): 225–27; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 4, 43–4, 65.

16 Bartlett, Great Surveys, 342–49, 354; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 59–62, 79. As an example, while Wheeler claimed to have named the Colorado Plateau, in either 1868 or 1871, this feat was also claimed by Grove Karl Gilbert, while the National Park Service credits John Wesley Powell. Bartlett, Great Surveys, 336; National Park Service, The Colorado Plateau, https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-colorado-plateau.htm.

17 He did however publish seven volumes of his work in zoology, palaeontology, geology, botany, and other fields. George Montague Wheeler, Report upon United States Geological Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, (Washington, DC: GPO, 1875–1889): Geology (Vol. 3, 1875); Zoology (Vol. 5, 1875); Astronomy and Barometric Hypsometry (Vol. 2, 1877); Paleontology (Vol. 4, 1877); Botany (Vol. 6, 1878); Archaeology (Vol. 7, 1879); Geographical Report (Vol. 1, 1889).

18 Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 29–36.

19 Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, 467–69; Bartlett, Great Surveys, 334–35; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 5.

20 Bartlett, Great Surveys, 341–48; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 16–27; Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, 471–77, Moore, King of the 40th Parallel, 250–51. Wheeler’s version of these stories can be found in: George M. Wheeler, Preliminary Report concerning Explorations and Surveys principally in Nevada and Arizona (Washington, DC: GPO, 1872), 16–17, 80–84.

21 John Rennie Short, Representing the Republic: Mapping the United States 1600–1900 (London: Reaktion books, 2001), 188; Short, Cartographic Encounters, 112.

22 Carl I. Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 1540–1861, vol. 5, bk. 2 (San Francisco: Institute for Historical Cartography, 1963), 336–39.

23 Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 38; Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 336–39; Bartlett, Great Surveys, 350–51; Moore, King of the 40thParallel, 251.

24 Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps (New York: Dover, 1979), 275–76.

25 Bartlett, Great Surveys, 351. An index map of the entire area to be mapped, though with only some of the rectangles numbered 1 through 41, was included in George Wheeler, ‘Annual Report of Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, Upon Explorations and Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1873,’ in Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War for the Year 1873 (Washington, DC: GPO), map following page 1218.

26 The Washington meridian was used to legally define the boundaries of many western territories as late as 1868 and was not officially superseded by the Greenwich meridian until 1884.

27 By this point it would have been obvious that Wheeler would never have the funds to survey this new area, and he suggests that the War Department may find these rectangles useful when mapping this region. George Wheeler, ‘Annual Report of Captain George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1879,’ in Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War for the Year 1879 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 2118.

28 In 1874 the Secretary of the Interior had Hayden and Powell come up with an alternate scheme for mapping the West, based on 145 or 146 rectangles, each 2.5 degrees of longitude and 1.5 degrees of latitude, presumably in competition with Wheeler, but nothing came of this. Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 361; Karrow, ‘George M. Wheeler,' 149–50.

29 In his work on the Great Surveys, Bartlett indicates 164 maps were created by the survey, while Follansbee, Evans and Frye counted 75. Schmeckbier counts 49 separate rectangles mapped and published. Bartlett, Great Surveys, 371; Richard T. Evans and Helen M. Frye, History of the Topographic Branch (Division), USGS Circular 1341, 2009, 3; Laurence Frederick Schmeckebier, Catalogue and Index of the Publications of the Hayden, King, Powell, and Wheeler Surveys, USGS Bulletin 222 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1904), 60–65; Robert Follansbee, From Predecessor Surveys to June 30, 1919, Vol. 1, A History of the Water Resources Branch, U.S. Geological Survey (Washington, DC: United States Geological Survey, 1994), 15.

30 Karrow ‘George M. Wheeler,’ 145. The complete portfolios are George M. Wheeler, Topographical Atlas Sheets (Washington, DC: U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, 1877–1878).

31 Karrow ‘George M. Wheeler,’ 145–46.

32 A search using the term ‘p1281’ will show the David Rumsey Map Collection website’s entire Wheeler collection, https://www.davidrumsey.com/.

33 The author has never found a paper or high-resolution digital version of sheet 65, although copies have appeared on online auction sites.

34 M. M. Macomb, ‘Report of Lieutenant M. M. Macomb, Fourth United States Artillery Officer in Charge of the Work, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1882,’ in Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, to the Secretary of War, for the Year 1882 (Washington, DC: GPO), map follows page 2824.

35 George Montague Wheeler, ‘Report of Captain George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, Officer in Charge of the Work, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1884,’ in Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, to the Secretary of War, for the Year 1884 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1884), 2378.

36 George Montague Wheeler, Topographical Map of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity (Washington, DC: GPO, 1883); Hank Johnston, The Yosemite Grant, 1864-1906 (Yosemite: Yosemite Association, 1995), 54–6; Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, Fourth Edition (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2010), 25.

37 Bergland, ‘Preliminary report,’ unnumbered plate following page 340.

38 Manning, Government in Science, 35; Moore, King of the 40th Parallel, 283–84; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 74–5.

39 Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 59–60; Karrow, ‘George M. Wheeler,’ 148. Dawdy implies Powell made this accusation, while Karrow identifies James Gardiner in Hayden’s survey as the accuser.

40 Eduard Imhof, Cartographic Relief Presentation (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2007), 9–10.

41 Imhof, Cartographic Relief, 11–13; Moore, King of the 40th Parallel, 265.

42 Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado and Portions of Adjacent Territory (New York: Julius Bien, 1877), 1.

43 Another organisation engaged in rapid mapping was the General Land Office. Land surveyors laying out townships and subdivisions for the Public Land Survey System were instructed to map out topographical features such as ridges and valleys, and frequently used hachures for this purpose. The public land survey system also survived opposition from Powell, who favoured an alternate scheme for the arid west. C. A. White, A History of the Rectangular Survey System (Washington, DC: GPO, 1983), 723; Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, 27–45.

44 Karrow, ‘George M. Wheeler,’ 141–42. While Wheeler’s hachures do provide a good overview of terrain, hachures are more suited to copper engraving than the lithography he used for printing, reducing the quality of the final map.

45 Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, 278; Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 74. For example, Powell’s map of Utah used hachures. Powell, Report on the Arid Regions, map following page 60, map following page 66, and folded Map of Utah.

46 Schmeckebier, Catalogue and Index, 60–62.

47 George Wheeler, ‘Annual Report of Captain George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1879’, in Annual report of the Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War for the year 1879 (Washington, DC: GPO), 2118.

48 Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 360.

49 Dawdy suggests it is impossible to know which came up with this topic first, while Goetzmann and Karrow give Wheeler priority. Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 74; Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, 482; Karrow, ‘George M. Wheeler,’ 142.

50 John Wesley Powell, A Report on the Arid Regions of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah, 2nd. ed. (Boston: the Harvard Common Press, 1983; originally published 1879), 6–24. Like Powell, Wheeler also suggested the standard public land survey system could be modified or replaced based on the land classification data he was mapping. George Wheeler, ‘Annual Report of Captain George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1879,’ in Annual report of the Chief of Engineers to the Secretary of War for the year 1879 (Washington, DC: GPO), 2122.

51 James R. Anderson, Ernest E. Hardy, John T. Roach, Richard E. Witmer, A Land Use and Land Cover Classification System for Use with Remote Sensor Data. USGS Professional Paper 964, 1976, 8.

52 The USGS National Geologic Map Database shows a steadily increasing output of these maps during these decades, though it does not list Wheeler’s geologic maps among these, as it does for those of Hayden, King, and Powell. USGS, National Geologic Map Database, 2023, map catalogue page. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ngmdb/ngmdb_home.html.

53 Manning, Government in Science, 93–98.

54 Evans and Frye, History of the Topographic Branch, 11.

55 Manning, Government in Science, 95.

56 For example, United States Geological Survey, Seventh Annual report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior, 1885-1886 (Washington, DC: USGS, 1888), Plate I.

57 United States Geological Survey, Fifteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior, 1893-1894 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1895), Plate I.

58 Alastair Pearson, D. R. Fraser Taylor, Karen D. Kline, and Michael Heffernan, ‘Cartographic Ideals and Geopolitical Realities: International Maps of the World from the 1890s to the Present,’ The Canadian Geographer 50 (2006): 150–65; Peter Nekola, ‘Looking Back at the International Map of the World,’ Environment, Space, Place 5 (2013): 1–20; Alastair W. Pearson and Michael Heffernan, ‘Globalizing Cartography? The International Map of the World, the International Geographical Union, and the United Nations,’ Imago Mundi 67 (2014): 58–80.

59 David G. Thompson, Routes to Desert Watering Places in the Mohave Desert Region, California, USGS Water Supply Paper 490-B, 1921, 88–90. This report was produced as part of an effort by the USGS to map desert watering places throughout the interior west. The beginning of the first world war put an end to this and mapping was conducted only for southern California and southwest Arizona, and like the Wheeler Atlas, raises questions of what might have been. See Joe Weber, ‘The Transition from Folk to Engineered Roads in the Mojave Desert,’ Journal of Historical Geography 61 (2018):14–16.

60 Karrow, ‘George M. Wheeler,,’ 154.

61 John C. Nelson, ‘Presettlement Vegetation Patterns Along the 5th Principal Meridian, Missouri Territory, 1815,’ American Midland Naturalist 137(1997): 81–83; W. Carter Johnson and Susan E. Boettcher, ‘The Presettlement Platte: Wooded or Prairie River?,’ Great Plains Research 10 (2000): 50–54; Mark D. Andersen, William L. Baker, ‘Reconstructing Landscape-Scale Tree Invasion Using Survey Notes in the Medicine Bow Mountains, Wyoming, USA,’ Landscape Ecology 21(2005): 245–48; Yi-Chen Wang and Chris P.S. Larsen, ‘Do Coarse Resolution U.S. Presettlement Land Survey Records Adequately Represent the Spatial Pattern of Individual Tree Species?,’ Landscape Ecology 21 (2006): 1003–017; Joy A. Fritschle, ‘Reconstructing Historic Ecotones Using the Public Land Survey: the Lost Prairies of Redwood National Park,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98 (2008): 27–29; Robert C. Weih, Jr. and Aaron J. Dick, ‘Modeling the Pre-Euroamerican Landscape with Government Land Office Surveys and Geostatistics,’ Transactions in GIS 12 (2008): 444–47; Mark A. Williams and William L. Bake, ‘Bias and Error in Using Survey Records for Ponderosa Pine Landscape Restoration,’ Journal of Biogeography 37 (2010): 707–11.

62 Brian Page and Eric Ross, ‘Envisioning the Urban Past: GIS Reconstruction of a Lost Denver District,’ Frontiers in Digital Humanities 2 (2015): 3.

63 Don Bufkin,’Geographic Change at Yuma Crossing 1849-1966,’ Arizona and the West 28(1986): 155–168; Annalies Corbin, ‘Shifting Sand and Muddy Water: Historic Cartography and River Migration as Factors in Locating Steamboat Wrecks on the Far Upper Missouri River,’ Historical Archaeology 32 (1998): 87–91; Christoph Knoll, Hanns Kerschner, Armin Heller, and Philipp Rastner, ‘A GIS-based Reconstruction of Little Ice Age glacier Maximum Extents for South Tyrol, Italy,’ Transactions in GIS 13 (2009): 453–55; Matti Zohar, ‘A land without people? The GIScience Approach to Estimating the Population of Ottoman Palestine towards the End of the 19th-century,’ Applied Geography 141 (2022): 102672; Matti Zohar and Tali Erickson-Gini, ‘The “Incense Road” from Petra to Gaza: An Analysis Using GIS and Cost Functions,’ International Journal of Geographic Information Science 34(2020): 292–310; Avery P. Hill, Connor J. Nolan, Kyle S. Hemes, Trevor W. Cambron, and Christopher B. Field, ‘Low-elevation Conifers in California’s Sierra Nevada are Out of Equilibrium with Climate,’ NASNexus 2 (2023): 6–7.

64 Joe Weber, ‘The Colorado and Virgin Rivers before Lake Mead,’ Journal of Maps 14, no. 3 (2018): 583–88; Joe Weber, Mapping Historical Las Vegas: A Cartographic Journey (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2022), 48–51.

65 Harry Thomas Cory and William Phipps Blake, The Imperial Valley and the Salton Sink (San Francisco: John J. Newbegin, 1915), 1412–16.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joe Weber

▸Joe Weber is professor in the Department of Geography, University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, Alabama). Email: [email protected]