Map No. 2, from the Mouth of Trap Creek to the Santa Fé Crossing (Gunnison and Beckwith, Pacific Railroad Surveys, 1855)
Map No. 2 of Captain J. W. Gunnison’s survey for a Pacific railroad near the 38th and 39th parallels, drawn in 1855 under Captain E. G. Beckwith by F. W. von Egloffstein from the 1853 field work (R. H. Kern, topographer) and engraved by Selmar Siebert for the published Reports (1859). It covers the plains of Kansas and Nebraska territories from the Missouri at Council Bluff, Omaha City and Nebraska City west to about 101°: Gunnison’s route with its numbered camps up the Kansas past Uniontown and Fort Riley, along the Smoky Hill Fork, across to Walnut Creek and up the Arkansas past Pawnee Fork and Fort Atkinson to the Santa Fé Crossing; the Santa Fe Trail, the emigrant road from Fort Leavenworth to the Platte, the road from Fort Kearny down the Little Blue, and the proposed railroad lines. “Pawnee Indians” is lettered across the country between the Platte and the Republican, and the lettered “Pawnee Trail” — the road of the Pawnee (Chaticks si Chaticks) south from their villages on the Platte and the Loup to the buffalo country of the Arkansas — runs from the south bank of the Platte below Fort Kearny across the Little Blue, the Pawnee or Republican Fork and the heads of Solomon’s and the Grand Saline forks to the Smoky Hill Fork, where the sheet stops drawing it. South of the Arkansas the sheet is blank.
Source
| Map | Explorations and surveys for a rail road route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Route near the 38th & 39th parallels |
|---|---|
| Author | Gunnison, Beckwith and Egloffstein, 1855 |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Rights | Public domain. Engraved by Selmar Siebert and published by the War Department in 1859 (Reports of Explorations and Surveys … for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, vol. 11) — a U.S. federal government work published before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 16 km (RMS 4 km at 14 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 first-degree (affine) fit through 14 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today — the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill forks, the mouths of the Blue, the Little Vermillion, Solomon’s and Grand Saline forks, Walnut Creek, Pawnee Fork, the Platte, Loup’s Fork and Plumb Creek, and Omaha City, Council Bluff, Plattsmouth and Nebraska City. The sheet’s engraved 30′ graticule (Greenwich) is regular — its 85 crossings agree with a second-degree polynomial to 0.3 km — but the drawing departs from it: along the Missouri and at Fort Riley it lies within a few km of its graticule, and westward progressively too far west of it, some 9 km at Walnut Creek, 13 km at Pawnee Fork and 20–25 km at Loup’s Fork, Plumb Creek, Fort Kearny and Fort Atkinson, so the graticule is not used. Leave-one-out error is 4.0 km median and 6.1 km RMS (worst Plumb Creek and Loup’s Fork, 14 and 11 km). Fort Kearny, Fort Riley and Fort Atkinson, not used as control points, land within 4, 4 and 13 km of where they stood, and the Pawnee Trail’s crossing of the Republican and its ends at the Platte and the Smoky Hill land within 1, 2 and 5 km of those rivers (its Grand Saline crossing, drawn freely, some 10 km north of the river). The black stitching seam across the middle of the scan, the title, the margins and the archive’s pencil marks are masked. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-16 |
| Covers | Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (2.5 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 7676; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (8.7 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (1.5 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 (2026-10-16): First release: placed by hand at 14 places. From the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (gm70005008, Map No. 2); added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (gm70005008, Map No. 2); added for Project Homeland
- 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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