1852 Stansbury Map of the Great Salt Lake to Fort Leavenworth Route (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Kansas

Howard Stansbury (February 8, 1806 - April 13, 1863) was an important surveyor, cartographer, and explorer who did his most important work in Utah during the middle part of the 19th century. Born in New York City, Stansbury trained to be a Civil Engineer. Shorty after getting married to Helen Moody of Detroit in 1827, Stansbury took a position with the United States Topographical Bureau. Under that organization he surveyed the James River in 1836, and the Illinois and Kaskaskia Rivers in 1837. In 1838, he oversaw the construction of a road from Milwaukee to the Mississippi River. Later in 1838, when the U.S Corps of Topographical Engineers was created, he joined as a first Lieutenant. With the Topographical Engineers he surveyed the Great Lakes, the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and constructed Florida's Carysfort Reef Lighthouse. During the Mexican-American War he constructed fortification in the Dry Tortugas at the westernmost point on the Florida Keys. Upon achieving the rank of Captain, Stansbury received a commissioned to head a survey of the Great Basin that would ultimately become the crowning achievement of his career. His assignment was to survey the emigrant trails to California, including the Oregon Trail, as well as the Great Salt Lake, and report on the status of the growing Mormon Community in Salt Lake City. Working with J. W. Gunnison and Alfred Carrington, a Mormon scout, Stansbury produced a masterful survey of the region that had a lasting effect not only on the development of the Great Basin, but on the development of the west in general. Upon completion of his survey, Stansbury set out on the road to Washington, completing another important survey in the process. On the way, he fell off his horse, taking an injury from which he never fully recovered. Following the presentation of his report to Congress, Stansbury was charged with additional survey work around the Great Lakes. Upon the outbreak of the American Civil War, he was assigned to recruitment duties in Ohio and later Wisconsin. Shortly after starting work at this post he suffered an abrupt heart attack and passed away. He is buried in St. Paul, Minnesota. More by this mapmaker...

John Williams Gunnison (November 11, 1812 - October 26, 1853) was a surveyor and officer in the U.S. Army. Born in New Hampshire, he attended West Point starting in 1837 and graduated second in his class. After serving as an artillery officer in fighting against the Seminoles in Florida, he was reassigned due to health reasons and joined the Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers. He spent most of the 1840s surveying lands around the Great Lakes, and in 1849 served as second-in-command to Howard Stansbury's expedition to map the Great Salt Lake. In addition to his cartographic work, Gunnison spent considerable time interacting with Mormons and wrote a book about the people and their religion on returning to Washington D.C. After additional surveying work around the Great Lakes in present-day Wisconsin, in 1853 Gunnison was assigned to lead an expedition to survey a railroad route through Utah (the Gunnison–Beckwith Expedition). While doing so, he was killed in a massacre committed by Pahvant Ute Indians, who had likely mistaken his surveying team for a group of Mormons, with whom the Pahvant were fighting a low-level war (the Walker War). In the context of existing tensions between the U.S. Government and Mormon settlers, rumors swirled that Brigham Young had orchestrated the massacre to prevent the railroad's construction, a charge which later investigations found to be baseless, but which nevertheless was widely believed at the time. The incident was one of several that increased mistrust between Mormons and the U.S. Government in the lead up to the Utah War of 1857 - 1858. Learn More...

Charles Preuss (1803- 1854), or as he was born George Karl Ludwig Preuss, was a German born lithographer and cartographer who produced an number of important maps of the American West in the middle part of the 19th Century. Preuss was born in Hohscheid, Germany, where grew up and studied the science of Geodesy. There he also studied the art of lithography with its inventor, Aloys Snefleder. After mastering the art, he was employed with the Prussian Government as mapmaker and surveyor. In 1834 he immigrated to the United States with his wife and children. In the United States he worked at a few minor drafting positions before taking work under Ferdinand Hassler and the U.S. Coast Survey. Hassler introduced Preuss to Captain John Charles Fremont, who was then planning his landmark surveying expedition to the American West. Impressed with Preuss' work, Fremont hired him as the expedition's cartographer. Preuss seems to have been singularly unimpressed with Fremont and the American West, complaining bitterly in his journals about both. Fremont he considered "childish" and the scenery "dull" and "lackluster." Nonetheless he was convinced to participate in one expedition after another and the maps he produced, both under Fremont and under Stansbury, were among the most important maps of the region ever drafted. These include, among many others, the first map of the Oregon Trail, the first accurate mapping of the Great Salt Lake, the naming of the Golden Gate, and the first identification of the California Gold region. Preuss's maps influenced North American cartography for the next two decades. Kemble Warren who assembled Preuss' maps as well as the work of many others into his "General Map" of the American west, said of Preuss, "his skill in sketching topography in the field and in representing it on the map has never been surpassed in this country." Ultimately, despite his many successes, the admiration of his peers, and a life of adventure, Preuss seems to have suffered from chronic undiagnosed depression. In September of 1854, he hung himself from a tree limb in Washington, D.C. Learn More...