1873 Map of Colorado Territory, and Northern Portion of New Mexico Showing the System of Parcs
DESCRIPTION
A fascinating and highly unusual map of Colorado Territory emphasizing the great mountain valleys that helped define the early geography and settlement of the region.
Published in Philadelphia in 1873 as part of Mission of the North American People, the map covers all of Colorado and a substantial portion of northern New Mexico, identifying counties, towns, military posts, mines, roads, railroads, rivers, and mountain ranges. Most prominent are the four great mountain valleys identified as the “System of Parcs”: North Park, Middle Park, South Park, and the San Luis Valley, dramatically emphasized in blue and enclosed by bold hand colored boundaries.
Mapping Colorado's Developing Territory
The extraordinary amount of information surrounding the colored parks documents how dramatically Colorado had changed since the territory was organized in 1861. Denver appears at the eastern foot of the mountains amid an expanding transportation network, while the Union Pacific, Kansas Pacific, Denver Pacific, Denver & Rio Grande, and other railroad lines extend across the region. Public land surveys, military posts, mining districts, wagon roads, county boundaries, and settlements record the rapid development brought by mining, migration, railroad construction, and western expansion.
The map belongs to a longer evolution of Colorado cartography, its geography deriving from an important earlier map issued by Jacob Monk in 1865 under the direction of William Gilpin. This 1873 version appeared in Gilpin's Mission of the North American People, a work containing six folding maps used to illustrate his theories concerning mountains, climate, natural resources, transportation, and the future development of the continent. Published only fourteen years after the Colorado Gold Rush and three years before Colorado achieved statehood, the map captures the territory during its transformation into an increasingly interconnected landscape of mining districts, railroads, towns, and agricultural settlement.
William Gilpin and His Vision of the West
The map is closely associated with William Gilpin (1813–1894), Colorado Territory's first governor and one of the nineteenth century's most enthusiastic advocates for the settlement and development of the American West. Gilpin viewed the Rocky Mountains not simply as an obstacle to migration but as the geographic backbone of a future continental nation, emphasizing the broad mountain valleys he called the “System of Parcs” as naturally advantageous centers for settlement. His ideas combined geography with an expansive vision of Manifest Destiny, mining, agriculture, population growth, and especially transcontinental railroads that would connect the interior with the rest of the country
CONDITION
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