1 option
The Army surveys of Gold Rush California : reports of the topographical engineers, 1849-1851 / edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Laura Lee Anderson.
Van Pelt Library F865 .A76 2015 1 v. + 3 maps
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Derby, George Horatio, 1823-1861.
- United States. Army.
- Engineers.
- Geography.
- Topographical surveying.
- History.
- Frontier and pioneer life.
- Environmental conditions.
- Gold mines and mining.
- California--Gold discoveries--Sources.
- California.
- California--History--1846-1850--Sources.
- California--Environmental conditions--History--19th century--Sources.
- Frontier and pioneer life--California--Sources.
- Topographical surveying--California--History--19th century--Sources.
- California--Geography--Sources.
- Derby, George Horatio, 1823-1861--Diaries.
- Derby, George Horatio.
- Engineers--California--Diaries.
- United States. Army--Officers--Diaries.
- United States.
- Armed Forces--Officers.
- Ecology.
- Genre:
- Diaries.
- History.
- Sources.
- Physical Description:
- 256 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm + 3 maps
- Place of Publication:
- Norman, Oklahoma : The Arthur H. Clark Company, an imprint of the University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.
- Summary:
- "As the Army's topographical engineer in California from 1849 to 1851, George Horatio Derby wrote detailed reports on the region, its people, its resources, and its geography--providing critical information for an understaffed military charged with bringing order to a vast new empire along the Pacific Slope. Early maps and reports by pioneers, trappers, and newspapermen, even by such professionals as John C. Fremont and William Emory, were limited in scope and often unreliable. In contrast, those authored by Derby and the Army's other trained topographical engineers were remarkably accurate, extensive, and richly descriptive. Long buried in the files of the National Archives, they have also remained largely unknown, even to historians. Collected and reproduced here for the first time, these journals and maps offer a new and unique perspective on California in the mid-nineteenth century. Derby's reports and journals appear alongside those of Robert Stockton Williamson, William H. Warner, Edward O.C. Ord, Nathaniel Lyon, Henry Walton Wessells, and Erasmus Darwin Keyes. These documents offer extraordinary firsthand views of the environment, natural resources, geography, and early settlement, as well as the effects of disease on Native and white populations. The writers' detailed, often witty insights offer new understandings of life in California during an era of momentous change. Historian Gary Clayton Anderson and anthropologist Laura Lee Anderson provide historical, geographic, and biographical context in the book's introduction and in headnotes and annotations for each journal. With these editorial enhancements, the documents reveal as much of the character of their authors and their time as of the land and peoples they so carefully describe"-- Provided by publisher.
- Contents:
- Introduction: The Army Journalists
- Derby's and Ord's First Journals : The Mining District and the Basin of Los Angeles, 1849
- Derby's Journal of the Sacramento River Expedition, 1849
- Derby's Survey of the Tulares Region, 1850
- The Journals of Williamson, Lyon, Wessells, and Keyes, 1850-1851
- Derby's Last Survey : The Lower Colorado River Valley, 1850-1851.
- Notes:
- Includes 3 folded maps in pocket on inside back cover.
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-246) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780870624308
- 087062430X
- OCLC:
- 894311070
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.