Samuel Augustus Mitchell’s 1846 New Map of Texas, Oregon and California with Regions Adjoining was the definitive American trail map of the mid-19th century. The most detailed and comprehensive map of its time, it was used by tens of thousands who emigrated by horseback and covered wagon to settle the virgin lands of the West.

The map accurately depicted all of the important emigrant trails including Lewis & Clark’s, the “Oregon Route”, Fremont’s routes, the “Caravan Route to Santa Fe” and the “Great Spanish Trail” from Los Angeles to Santa Fe. In 1847, Brigham Young carried multiple copies of this pocket map along what came to be known as The Mormon Trail.

At the western edge of “Indian Territory”, you’ll find early designations of Pike’s Peak and Long’s Peak. Follow Lewis and Clark’s Oregon Route from Independence, MO along the Platte River to the Snake River, south of Jackson’s Hole and The Three Tetons and north of The Great Salt Lake.

Scan California’s Sierra Nevada range for “Mountain Lake” (now Lake Tahoe) and the Pass through the Sierra at an elevation of “9,328 feet above the sea”. Trace the Cascade Range from Mt. St. Helens to Mt. Rainier to Mt. Baker; and, locate Puget’s Sound before Seattle appeared on the map.

This map was one of the first to represent Texas as a state, albeit with boundaries extending north and west as far as Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico.

Because it was the most complete and up-to-date map of the time, the Mitchell map was undoubtedly the reference for many of those who made the first discoveries of gold in California in early 1848 that led to the Gold Rush of 1849.