Mapping the West.(Heading West: Mapping the Territory exhibition at New York Public Library, New York, NY)(Brief Article)

The history of the discovery, charting, and settlement of the American West can be told in many ways, but certainly one of the most visually fascinating is to be found in maps. Until the nineteenth century the West was largely unexplored territory. The New York Public Library in New York City has some 6,000 maps and atlases pertaining to the West, from which approximately 175 examples have been selected for an exhibition entitled Heading West: Mapping the Territory that is on view at the library until May 19.

The earliest maps in the exhibition reveal that their creators were a clueless bunch. Their fanciful interpretations of the geography of the virgin landscape relied on imagination, not fact. The first of these maps is a chart designed by Sebastian Munster and published in 1540, which erroneously depicts a water passage from Europe to Asia. A map created by John Speed nearly a century later shows California as an island and demarcates the mythical Northwest Passage, which was not discredited until well into the nineteenth century.

With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which some describe as Thomas Jefferson's most important contribution to the nation, the size of the country was vastly expanded. The government acted quickly to sponsor expeditions in order to learn what these new lands offered in the way of natural resources and economic potential. Explorers such as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Zebulon Pike, and John Charles Fremont provided mapmakers with much more detailed information than had hitherto been available, and maps incorporating their discoveries were ...