This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/26/2022
[PACIFIC RAILROAD SURVEYS]. Reports of exploration and surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, made under the direction of the Secretary of War... Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson; T. Ford, 1855–1860. 12 volumes in 13, large 4to. Profusely illustrated with folding maps, lithograph plates, colored lithographic plates (including hand–colored lithographs of birds), graphs and charts, etc. (Several plates foxed or browned, some offsetting from plates to text, some small tears to maps at folds including the Warren map which is detached). A mixed set in contemporary cloth, quarter leather backed boards, and full calf (some rebacked with renewed lettering–pieces and endsheets, general light wear to extremities, several joints tender, dampstaining near lower margin in Vol. X, intermittent foxing throughout). FIRST QUARTO EDITION, House of Representative issues (Volume XI is the Senate issue as usual). The numerous lithographs depict bird’s–eye views of the region, native peoples of the areas explored, folding maps detailing newly discovered areas, etc. Contains the reports of Humphreys, Stevens, Beckwith, Whipple, Warren, Williamson, Lander, et al. “The Pacific Railroad Surveys are the most important and massive compilation of exploration reports and data about Trans–Mississippi West published in the era of exploration” (Reese) and is “the most important work on North American birds up to its date since Audubon and Wilson” (Ayer). INCLUDES A FIRST EDITION OF THE WARREN MAP (dated “1854–5–6–7” and engraved by Selmar) in Volume XI which was “among the great maps of the United States that preceded the Civil War” (Wheat) and considered by Cohen to be a “masterpiece” that integrated for the first time the discoveries of the earliest explorers beginning with Lewis and Clark to the newly compiled data of the Pacific Railroad Surveys. Ayer/Zimmer 646; Cohen, Mapping the West, pp. 172–175; Hill 1281; Howes P3; Wagner–Camp 262–267; Reese, Best of the West 138; Reese, Stamped with a National Character 75; Wheat, Transmississippi 822–824, 843–846, 852, 853, 864–867, 874, 875, 877–882, 898, 936.