1849 Greenleaf Map of Oregon Territory and British Columbia

This is Jeremiah Greenleaf's 1849 map of Oregon Territory. The map reflects the resolution of the Oregon Question, with a fixed boundary at the 49th parallel. It is one of the few atlas maps of Oregon Territory to appear prior to 1850.

A Closer Look

Coverage embraces from Prince of Wales Island to Port Trinidad and inland as far as modern-day Idaho. The area covered roughly corresponds with modern day Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Idaho. It recognizes Russian claims in Alaska as far south as Portland Inlet, the current Alaska-Canada border. The area of focus is Oregon, at the time dominated by Native Americans, with only a few Anglo-European settlements competing for the region's rich fur trade. Among these are Astoria (Ft. George), Fort Wallah Wallah, Fort Hall, Fort Vancouver, McKay's Settlement, and Jarvis' Settlement. River courses, particularly the Columbia River (also named the Oregon River), which acted as the primary artery of travel eastward, and well defined. Great Salt Lake, appearing in the bottom right, is here named Lake Timpanoges.

54-40 or Fight! American Claims to British Columbia

Following the transcontinental crossing of North America by the British Northwest Company sponsored explorer Alexander MacKenzie (1792 – 1793), and the American expedition of Lewis and Clark up the Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River (1804 – 1806), it became apparent that control of the fur and resource rich Pacific Northwest would bring great wealth and power to whoever could assert sovereignty. The American tycoon John Jacob Astor, with the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, was the first to attempt a permanent trading colony in the region, founding Astoria on the Columbia River in 1811. This quickly led to a confrontation with the established British-Canadian Northwest Company over this valuable territory. Americans in the 1820s through the 1840s argued that most of the Pacific Northwest should be part of the United States as a legacy of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. England, on the other hand, argued for residual claims to the region derived from the MacKenzie Expedition and its fur trading empires: The Northwest Company and the Hudson Bay Company. The Oregon Dispute, as it came to be known, became an important geopolitical issue between the British Empire and the United States, especially after the War of 1812. Americans adopted the slogan '54-40 or Fight!' until the Oregon Question was finally resolved roughly along the current border by the 1846 Oregon Treaty.

Publication History and Census

This map is a much-updated revision of the David Hugh Burr map of 1833. The Burr map plates eventually fell into the hands of Jeremiah Greenleaf, who revised them for publication in his own Universal Atlas. The present example is from the 1849 edition of the atlas, the last and final, which nonetheless was extensively revised over the 1848. We note an example in the David Rumsey collection, which has been populated digitally throughout OCLC, making a comprehensive survey of existing physical examples nearly impossible. Nonetheless, the 1849 edition of the atlas is rare, with Rumsey correctly noted that it is not in Karpinski. We do note an example, however, in Phillips.