LOT #60133 |
Sold on Dec 2, 2023 for: Not Sold
Andrew B. Gray. Southern Pacific Railroad. ... (Total: 2 Items)
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Description
Exceedingly Rare Complete Copy, Accompanied by the Virtually Unobtainable Preliminary Map
Andrew B. Gray. Southern Pacific Railroad.
Survey of a Route for the Southern Pacific R.R., on the 32nd
parallel by A. B. Gray, for the Texas Western R.R. Company.
Cincinnati: Wrightson & Co.'s ("Railroad Record,") Print.,
1856.8vo. [1-5] 6-110 pages, errata slip bound before Preface. 33 lithographed plates, 3 lithograph maps (the extremely rare "Preliminary" map which would have been bound at end, here offered separately, see below). Modern half calf and marbled boards. Preserved in a full black levant morocco clamshell case.
Exceedingly rare completed copy, accompanied by the virtually unobtainable Preliminary Map, and the first edition to include these "unrivalled Southwestern views" (Howes). This extremely rare report is illustrated with fine views all along the proposed railroad route through Texas to the Pacific Ocean, including El Paso, Fort Yuma, Mesilla, Fort Chadbourne, Cathedral Rock, and the Pecos River. The expedition artist was the German-born Texan mining engineer, Charles Schuchard (1827-1883). Most of Schuchard's drawings documented the topography of the potential rail line, but he also turned his pen to a number of camp scenes, as well as views of forts and settlements. The original drawings were destroyed in the Smithsonian fire of 1856. This is the only copy of this work with a complete suite of the lithographs and with all three maps to appear in the auction records of RBH or ABPC.
This work should not be confused with Gray's Texas Western Railroad (Cincinnati, 1855), which is a different text and lacks any illustrative materials. Graff and Howes call this a greatly expanded second edition of Gray's similar "Texas Western Railroad" of 1855, but Wagner-Camp insists that it is an entirely different publication.
This report is Gray's ultimate answer to John Russell Bartlett's 1854 Personal Narrative in which Gray demonstrates the correctness of his insistence that the boundary line favored by Bartlett would deprive the United States of its major southern route for a transcontinental railroad. Arriving in Texas in December, 1853, Gray quickly set to work in January, 1854, with a party of nineteen men to survey the route as close to the 32nd parallel as possible. He eventually ran his survey from Fort Chadbourne to the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers and thence to San Diego, California. In so doing, Gray and his party recorded many features of the country never recorded or depicted. The party also corrected many distances and locations that appeared incorrectly on contemporary maps. Particularly fascinating are some of his comments on potential labor pools to be found along the way. He, for example, praises the Papagos and Puma, stating that they "by proper management might be made very useful," and seems to consider them better labor than the Mexican peons (p. 85). Also of great interest are his remarks and observations on the geology of the areas the party traversed. The extraordinary lithographs accompanying Gray's report are among the more important and rare images of nineteenth-century Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Many of the lithographs are the first printed views of the places depicted. Among the accolades accorded these images are "unrivalled Southwestern views" (Howes) and "some of the best ever made of southwestern scenes" (Dykes). Dramatic Romanticism infuses many of the images. Against the backdrop of the sublime and beautiful landscape of the Southwest, we often see small yet precisely rendered human figures engaged in surveyed, making camp, and other activities. Wrightson and Company of Cincinnati skillfully created the plates after original sketches by San Antonio artist Carl Schuchard (1827-1883), a German immigrant who had tried his luck unsuccessfully in the California Gold Rush and returned to Texas. Schuchard's precise and delicate images afford us a rare glimpse of the Southwest as it existed almost a hundred and fifty years ago and provide the most detailed and graphic portrayal in existence of the course of the southern route for the railroad. This iconography is all the more valuable because Schuchard's original drawings were destroyed in the 1865 Smithsonian fire.
[Accompanied by:] Preliminary Map to Accompany Report of A. B. Gray of the Route of the Texas Western Railroad Now Changed to Southern Pacific Railroad Compiled from Explorations by A. B. Gray and Others. 1856. Middleton, Wallace & Co. Lithogrs., Cincinnati, Ohio. 55 x 85 cm. The map extends beyond the neat line on the right side at 30º. Original full-hand-color in wash and route outlines in red. Presumably supplied from another copy.
Gray's large map shows the route of the proposed railroad from St. Louis, Cairo, and Memphis via El Paso, with two routes through New Mexico and present-day Arizona to San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Gray's chart of San Diego represents a continuation of his earlier survey work for the Boundary Survey, with additions such as Old Fort Stockton and the U.S. Military Depot at New San Diego. The world map illustrates trade routes across Europe and Asia to America.
Condition: Text and plates foxed (varies from light to occasionally heavy), last two quires considerably stained. The large map has been expertly mended on verso at folds and edges, with pinhole size losses at a few fold intersections, some light toning, some soiling on verso.
References: Alliot, p. 90; Dykes, Western High Spots ("High Spots of Western Illustrating"), p. 45; Fifty Texas Rarities 38. Graff 1626; Harlow, Maps of the Pueblo Lands of San Diego 1602-1874 21, pp. 99-100; Howes G-331 ("b"); Raines, p. 97; Tyler, Prints of the American West, pp. 87 & 90-91; Vandale 78; Wagner-Camp 275; Wheat, Mapping the Transmissippi West 893, I, p 39 (illustrated opposite p. 48).
Provenance: Occasional penciled editorial notes in the hand of J. M. Daniel, Chief Engineer of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Railroad Company. Although there is no ownership inscription in this copy, it was removed after March 2001 from a sammelband of railroad reports that bore Daniel's signatures and notes dated in 1867. On J. M. Daniel, see: Reed, A History of Texas Rail-Roads, pp. 93-94. Pinckney, Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century, p. 167; Samuels, Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West, pp. 428-29; Taft, Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, p. 269.
Auction Info
2023 December 2 The Ted Lusher Texas History Collection, Part One Signature® Auction #6281 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
December, 2023
2nd
Saturday
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