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Lithographed map on 7 sheets. Each sheet approx. 39.5x63.5 cm. (15¾x25"), folding into later cloth-backed boards 21.5x13 cm (8½x5¼").

Preuss's landmark map, based on the great Frémont/Preuss map of 1845 but in much more detail over the area depicted, in response to a request by the Senate of the United States, under whose auspices it was published. This is the second issue, or edition, published three years after the separately issued first edition, in John A. Rockwell's "Report... survey of certain routes for a canal or railroad between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; also... the establishment of a national road from the western frontier of Arkansas to California..." This version of the map is identical to that of the original 1846 Senate issue, except that the it does not have the Baltimore lithographer's name (E. Weber), and Sheet VI was misnumbered (though here corrected). Wheat remarks that the finished map "was a road guide for Oregon emigrants such as had never previously existed... The purview of each section is quite narrowly limited to the emigrant road, but the topography is developed in rather more detail than on the parent map. Owing to its rarity and to its having long stood in the shadow of the much more widely known and distributed Frémont map of 1845, Preuss's sectional map of 1846 has been insufficiently appreciated by students of Western history...." There are tables of meteorological observations and descriptive commentary on the map. Wheat illustrates all seven sections of the map. Bound into the folder preceding the Preuss maps is another folding sheet, containing "Map of the Country between the Atlantic & Pacific Oceans," with a smaller map of the world as well - this is from the Rockwell report and lightly foxed. With bookplate of W.J. Holliday tipped in at front.

Provenance: Ross Valley Book Company, 9/79

References: Graff 3360; Streeter Sale 3100; Wagner-Camp 115 (note); Wheat Transmississippi 523 (all referring to 1846 issue of the map).