Maps of the Wheeler Survey

What follows is less story and more bibliography, though the story of the Wheeler Survey is well-told in many other places and worth exploring in its own right. A  detailed accounting of the maps, annual reports, and archival resources is also available  through Denver Public Library.

After the Civil War, the nation looked westward as additional gold discoveries in the Rockies compelled Congress to increasingly see the need to gain a better understanding of the vast western interior of the United States. Trails for commerce and emigration had long intersected the region, but Congress lacked the scientific knowledge to govern it and its now-undeniably rich resources more effectively. To that end Congress funded four surveys by Ferdinand V. Hayden, Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, and a young Army Corps of Engineers lieutenant named George Montague Wheeler. Of the four "Great Surveys," as they collectively came to be known, George Wheeler's project was geographically the most ambitious in scope, and executed with more of an eye toward the exercise of military objectives than the other surveys. Over the course of a little more than a decade, from 1869-1879, Wheeler (1842-1905) and his annual expeditions crisscrossed much of the American Southwest, recording the area's geography, geology, land capability, paleontology, archaeology, and zoology.

According to the Survey's final geographical report, this vast territory consisted of 1,443,360 square miles, from the 100th meridian west of Greenwich to the Pacific Coast, from Canada to Mexico, but not including the newly purchased Alaskan territory. Unhappily for Wheeler, the effort was cut short by the merging of the surveys into the U.S. Geological Survey on June 30, 1879. Wheeler's team was nevertheless able to map 326,891 square miles -- mostly in New Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.

Colorful and descriptive tales of the Great Surveys are many, with the actual reports even providing insights into the minds and often emotions of the officers involved. Less available is a cohesive accounting for the maps issued by the officially-named Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian. The best of these remains Philip Lee Phillips' epic 1909 treatment on  pages 705-713 of A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress , upon which the work here is based and I have added to it additional works and links to digitized images. What follows comprises an attempt to get a better understanding of, and provide better 21st century access to, those maps that were actually published. It is not intended to be a fully comprehensive treatment of the subject, however. Many thanks to those who helped with this project, and of course all errors are ultimately mine. In a set as complex as this, errors due to lack of information or mixing up information are inevitable.

For further reading about Wheeler and the Survey, we suggest:

Bartlett, Richard A. (1962). Great Surveys of the American West. University of Oklahoma Press. Note that Barlett's 1953 UC-Boulder master's thesis covers the same topic but focuses on Colorado from 1867-1879.

Goetzmann, William H. (1966). Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. Knopf.

Goetzmann, William H. The Heroic Age of Western Geological Exploration: the U.S. Geological Survey and the Men and Events that Created It (1979). The American West, 16(5), 4-13, 59-61.

Dawdy, Doris Ostrander (1993). George Montague Wheeler: the man and the myth. Ohio University Press.

To aid in comparing sheets and editions, I've followed the David Rumsey collection example of citing any Phillips reference as P1281-##. Generally speaking, the text from Phillips is quoted for convenience in the  detailed Denver Public Library compilation. 

In his proposal to the Army, Wheeler presented his 1873 "Skeleton Map" showing 95 sections (or quadrangles) intended for publication at a scale of 1:506,880 (1 inch=8 miles), though only 41 were actually numbered in this early sheet. In the end, nothing outside of the range of grids 32 through 84 had numbered sheets issued for them. Phillips lists 179 different maps produced by the survey, including sheets that were produced, but never published. That higher number includes the more detailed 1:253,440 (1 inch=4 miles) quarter-sections issued from 1876 onward. All told, 89 sections and quarter-sections were published in whole or in part, as represented in the Guide to the Wheeler Survey Maps, located at the end of the DPL compilation cited above. That guide is a summary of the sheets issued where those sheets represent numbered sections.

Atlas Sheets

Officially, two thematic atlases, or series, were issued as loose-leaf collections: the topographical atlas, and the geological atlas. A third series, in many ways similar to the other atlases in presentation save for title pages and the like, was the 'land classification' series. Though the map titles sometimes used the phrase 'economic features' instead. Only quarter-sections 69D, 70A, and 70C received full treatment for all 3 atlas themes.

In the  DPL compilation , I've noted where the annual reports include geographical research on the theme even when the map itself wasn't produced. Lieutenant, and later Brigadier General, Montgomery M. Macomb sometimes lamented in the final reports about the lack of staff available to sift through the field research to actually produce the maps. At times the mapmakers experimented with different ways to produce maps, resulting in multiple minor variations in the same sheet. Phillips is a good source to locate these.

TOPOGRAPHICAL ATLAS

The foundation upon which the other two series rested were the topographic maps, and 50 sections or quarter-sections were published. According to Barlett, Wheeler and his superiors recognized the historically proven military need for a comprehensive understanding of the rugged landscapes of the west in order to know better how to move around in and assert control over what was still mostly a wild west. Where were the towns? The roads? The mountains and canyons? The trails? Geological maps wouldn't help the army answer those questions.

GEOLOGICAL ATLAS

Sheets for only 14 quarter-sections were published in this atlas, and some only partially covered. Powell complained that "there is not a single square mile of the Rocky Mountain region sufficiently accurate and in detail on the engineer maps that we could use for geological purposes." (Goetzmann, William H. (1979), p.11). That the Wheeler Survey produced any at all is more testament to the fierce competition for continued Congressional funding than a desire to divert from the core project goal of mapping the west. Though some other more scandalous expressions of Wheeler's 'geologic interest' is the topic of Dawdy's 1993 work.

LAND CLASSIFICATION SERIES

In all, land classification series maps for 28 quarter-sections were produced, recording areas good for agriculture, timber, grazing, or "arid and barren." The first sheets were not issued until 1876, though these had somewhat more use for military purposes when deciding which areas might need military protection, and what local resources would be around to support such operations.

Progress Maps

Progress maps, illustrating the mapping and surveying done to date, were issued with the annual reports, and published from 1873-1882. These color maps show the section grids, with the quarter-section sheets numbered and colored appropriately as well.

Special Sheets

Where warranted, sheets were issued that covered important areas or topics, but were not part of the numbered series. These include a treatment of the ancient Lake Bonneville (now reduced to the Great Salt Lake), the Lake Tahoe region, and the Washoe Mining District and Comstock Lode.

There might be a story in itself involving the various seals used on the sheet maps. In any event, the number of similar but different seals used during the course of the survey is impressive. Phillips describes the seals variously, including "large seal," "small seal," "small seal with wreath," "seal enclosed with the words ...," etc. Nevertheless, the wording is general enough to not completely encompass the variety, so there is some duplication of phrases that cover variations of seal design.

These seals could be found at the top center of each map sheet, including the covers and legends published as atlas sheets.

Contemporary criticism of the Wheeler Survey's work centered around the lack of highly qualified engineers on its staff, and the lack of detail on many of the maps the survey produced. One of the beauties of the survey's work is that, like many enterprises of this scope, the stories surrounding the Wheeler Survey continue as long as you want them to continue.

Included in the  DPL bibliography  is a selected listing of archival collections holding various documents and papers produced by members of the Wheeler Survey over the years. Within those archives are the source of stories yet untold. More collections exist than are listed there, though by the time a researcher sifts through those resources a more focused line of research will no doubt be made evident.

Craig Haggit, Senior Special Collections Librarian, Denver Public Library