Digital Image: 1848 Ord Maps of the Gold Discoveries in California (3 maps)

GoldRegionCalifornia-ord-1848_d
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Main View
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Main View
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 1
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 2
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 3
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 4
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Main View Thumbnail
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 1 Thumbnail
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 2 Thumbnail
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 3 Thumbnail
Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings. - Alternate View 4 Thumbnail
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Digital Image: 1848 Ord Maps of the Gold Discoveries in California (3 maps)

GoldRegionCalifornia-ord-1848_d

This is a downloadable product.
  • Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings.
  • Added: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:03:00
  • Original Document Scale: 1 : 680000
'...most important of all the maps of 1848,' -Wheat
$50.00
Go To Original Antique Map

(w/ historical analysis)

Title

Topographical Sketch of the Gold and Quicksilver District of California. / Positions of the Upper and Lower Gold Mines on the South Fork of the American River, California. / Upper Mines. / Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings.
  1848 (dated)     23.5 x 16.5 in (59.69 x 41.91 cm)     1 : 680000

Description

FOR THE ORIGINAL ANTIQUE MAP, WITH HISTORICAL ANALYSIS, CLICK HERE.

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Cartographer S

Edward Otho Cresap Ord (October 18, 1818 - July 22, 1883) was an American army officer and engineer active in California in the mid to late 19th century. He was born in Cumberland, Maryland. According to family lore, his father, James Ord, was the illegitimate son of British monarch George VI and Maria Fitzherbert. He showed an early proficiency in mathematics, some calling him a genius, and in 1839 he graduated from West Point with an engineering degree. As it so happened, his West Point roommate was none other than William Tecumseh Sherman. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery, with whom he saw action in the Second Seminole War (1835 - 1842). After the Mexican-American War (1846 - 1848) Ord sailed on the USS Lexington via Cape Horn to the newly acquired territory of California - accompanying him were his West Point roomies Henry Halleck and William Tecumseh Sherman. They arrived just in time for the Gold Rush. Ord produced a seminal map of the Gold and Quicksilver district of California dated July 25, 1848 - the first published map of the California Gold Region. Later in the fall of 1848, Ord and Sherman, working for John Augustus Sutter, Jr., assisted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a detailed survey of Sacramento - instrumental in creating that city's downtown grid. He went on to do survey work in the vicinity of Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest. At the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), Ord was serving as Captain of Battery C, 3rd U.S. Artillery, and also as post commander at the U.S. Army's Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. Returning east to fight in the war, he was assigned brigade commander of the Pennsylvania Reserves. He served with distinction through the war, seeing action at Dranesville, Hatchie Bridge, Luka, and Vicksburg, Crater, and Fort Harrison, where he was wounded. At the end of the Civil War, in 1865, Ord was assigned to investigate Confederate involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. By this time, Ord was a Major General. He retired from the army in 1881 to take a position under U. S. Grant as a civil engineer on the Mexican Southern Railroad. During this assignment, Ord's daughter, Roberta, married prominent Mexican general Jerónimo Treviño. Also in Mexico, Ord contracted yellow fever and died on his way home during a stopover in Havanna, Cuba. More by this mapmaker...


Peter Stephen Duval (1804 - February 8, 1886) was a prominent Philadelphia lithographer. He immigrated to Philadelphia from France in 1831 to take a job as a lithographer at the Philadelphia firm owned by Cephas Childs. In 1837, Childs retired and Duval took over the business. Over the course of the next thirty years, Duval would have several business partners including the Swiss-American engravers Charles and Frederick Bourquin (1808 - 1897). In 1857 his son Steven C. Duval joined the business. Peter Duval retired in 1869 but continued to be involved in his company until his death in 1886. Learn More...

Source

'Ex. Doc. No. 1. House of Representatives', Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the Second Session of the Thirtieth Congress, (Washington: Wendell and Van Benthuysen) 1848.    

References

Rumsey 3458.000. Wheat, C. I., Maps of the Gold Region, #51-53. Wheat, C. I., Mapping of the Transmississippi West, 1540 – 1861, v. 3, p. 52-53, #565.