Map of the trail from Mona Lake to Black’s (U.S. Army manuscript, 1860s)
An Army manuscript “Map of the Trail from Mona Lake to Black’s — distance about 70 miles” (National Archives), drawn in the 1860s: the trail in red from the camp at Walker Lake below Bloody Cañon, over Mono Pass, down the Tuolumne past Tuolumne Meadows and Lake Tenaya, by Porcupine Flat and Tamarack and Crane flats — where the Yosemite and the Sonora and Big Oak Flat trails branch off — and down past the farms to Black’s on Bull Creek: the Mono Trail, the Miwok and Mono Paiute route across the Sierra.
Source
| Map | Map of the Trail From Mona Lake to Black's |
|---|---|
| Author | U.S. Army (unsigned), 1865 |
| Archive | Wikimedia Commons |
| Rights | Public domain. An unpublished U.S. Army manuscript — a federal government work, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 15 km (RMS 3.5 km at 9 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. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a smoothing thin-plate spline through 9 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-09 |
| Covers | California |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (0.9 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 5260; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (3.6 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (1.9 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 (2026-10-09): First release: placed by hand at 9 places. From the National Archives (NAID 100305664) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the National Archives (NAID 100305664) 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.
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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