Reconnaissance and survey of a railway route from Mississippi River, near 35th parallel north lat., Pacific Ocean
Lieutenant Amiel W. Whipple’s reconnaissance for a railroad near the 35th parallel, 1853–54, from the Rio Grande at Albuquerque to Los Angeles (Map No. 2 of his report). It marks the Spanish Trail by the Vegas springs, a trail through the country it labels “Yampais (Ya-ba-pais)”, the Hopi (“Moquis”) and Navajo country, Zuni, Old Zuni and the Rio Grande pueblos, and the route down the Mojave River and over Cajon Pass.
Source
| Map | Reconnaissance and survey of a railway route from Mississippi River, near 35th parallel north lat., Pacific Ocean |
|---|---|
| Author | Lieut. A. W. Whipple, Topl. Engrs., assisted by Lieut. J. C. Ives and A. H. Campbell, 1855 |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1855 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 25 km (RMS 3.7 km at 90 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 graticule fits to about 1 km, but the map draws places 20–25 km from where its graticule puts them (Zuni, Fort Defiance, Los Angeles; Albuquerque and Isleta are within 2 km), so read it to within about 25 km away from the five anchors. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a smoothing thin-plate spline through the sheet’s one-degree graticule (crossings from a polyconic fit to 16 ticks on its borders, 0.2 km) and five places — Zuni, Albuquerque, Isleta, Los Angeles and San Gabriel; 90 points in all. The sheet was fetched at half its 23,301-pixel width. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-06 |
| Covers | Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (1 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 2476; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (3.2 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (1.2 MB)
Project Homeland
This map’s trails are traced into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source, where they are compared with the other maps’ lines. Members can trace more of them: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-06): First release: placed by hand at 90 places. From the Native Routes sources register; Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (99446139).
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (99446139)
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Library of Congress
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
Something on this map sits in the wrong place? Members can show where with Fix placement on the map — confirmed fixes are tested against the map’s other control points each night and credited here. For anything else, report a problem.
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