Sketch showing the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, from Mouth of the Paria to Mouth of Diamond Creek (Thompson, 1874)
G. Thompson’s manuscript sketch for the Wheeler survey (the U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian), compiled in 1874 “from surveys and sketches of the Office” at four miles to the inch: the Grand Cañon in hachures from the mouth of the Paria through Marble Cañon, past the mouth of the Little Colorado, around the “Island Plateau” (Powell Plateau) and the mouths of Kanab Cañon and Cataract Creek (Havasu Creek), to the To-ro-weap Valley and its cones, with the Kaibab Plateau and its East and West Terraces, Jacob’s Pool and Pipe Spring to the north, and red triangulation rays from Thompson’s 1872 stations to San Francisco Mountain, Red Butte and Navajo Mountain, and on his 1873 line to the Hopi town of Oraibi. Lieutenant Ives’s survey of 1858 is copied in blue (“evidently correct”): his camps 67–77 from the mouth of Diamond Creek by Hualpais Spring, the Cedar Forest, Snow Spring, the Pine Forest and the Forest Lagoons to the pools below Mount Floyd, with the “Indian trail” he drew up Diamond Creek in Hualapai country. Thompson adds in black an “Indian foot trail” carrying Ives’s route from his camp 72 down a side canyon of the south rim to the river, across from the Toroweap cone (Vulcan’s Throne), in Havasupai and Hualapai country. The title block and notes are not shown.
Source
| Map | Sketch showing the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River |
|---|---|
| Author | G. Thompson (Wheeler survey), 1874 |
| Archive | Wikimedia Commons |
| Rights | Public domain. An unpublished manuscript of the Wheeler survey (War Department, Office of the Chief of Engineers) — a U.S. federal government work, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 15 km (RMS 3.1 km at 33 control points). Placed by hand in a map-queue session and approved by a person. If something sits in the wrong place, members can fix it with Fix placement on the map. The stations sit within about 3 km of the graticule, but the canyon between the Little Colorado and Kanab Creek is a sketch: a feature there can be about 15 km out (the Island Plateau is 17 km). |
| Method | Placed by hand: a smoothing thin-plate spline through the sheet’s own graticule — its ruled parallels every 10′ from 36°50′ to 35°30′ and its two sheet-edge meridians, which are not labelled and fall at about 113°53′ and 111°06′ W as set from the places — and 15 places read from the scan: Thompson’s stations at the mouth of the Paria, Pipe Spring, Jacob’s Pool, Navajo Mountain, the Butte (Shinumo Altar), the North Side Mts. (Mount Trumbull), the Cone (Vulcan’s Throne) and San Francisco Mountain, Red Butte, Oraibi, Mount Floyd, Ives’s camp at the mouth of Diamond Creek, and the mouths of the Little Colorado, Kanab Cañon and Cataract Creek; 33 points in all. The stations agree with the graticule within about 3 km (Pipe Spring, and Mount Floyd copied from Ives, about 8 km); the canyon itself is sketched — it draws the mouths of Kanab Cañon, Cataract Creek and the Little Colorado 6–10 km south of their latitudes, and the “Island Plateau” (Powell Plateau) some 17 km east of where it stands, so that is left out of the fit. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-15 |
| Covers | Arizona |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (1.5 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 4032; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (5 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (1.3 MB)
Project Homeland
This map is open for tracing into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source. Members trace a trail by clicking along it: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-15): First release: placed by hand at 33 places. From the National Archives (NAID 143870467) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the National Archives (NAID 143870467) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Wikimedia Commons
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
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