Map of Southwest Part of Oregon (1st Oregon Cavalry, 1862)
A manuscript field map of south-western Oregon from the 1st Oregon Cavalry’s scout of the Klamath country in 1862: the Rogue valley, the Cascades and the Klamath Lakes east to Goose, Summer and Abert lakes, with Capt. Kelly’s and Lt. White’s camps of September–November 1862, the proposed site for a post at the Klamath Lakes, a proposed agency and reservation for the Klamath and Modoc, and the wagon roads and pack trails explored to the Dalles and Lassen’s Meadows. Its legend keys “Indian Trails in present use” in red: trails of the Klamath (Maqlaqs) and Modoc country — between the villages at Klamath Marsh, on the east shore of Upper Klamath Lake and at Link River, and on to Lost River and Tule (Rhett) and Clear (Wright) lakes — with others west over the Cascades toward the Rogue and Umpqua valleys and north up the Deschutes; the Northern Paiute (“Pah Ute”) country lies to the east. Red notes record killings along the emigrant roads from 1847 to the early 1860s. Lake Harney and the Owyhee country, sketched too freely to place, are not shown; nor are the table of distances and the legend.
Source
| Map | Map of Southwest Part of Oregon |
|---|---|
| Author | 1st Oregon Cavalry, 1862 |
| Archive | Wikimedia Commons |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1862 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 23 km (RMS 3 km at 29 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 thin-plate spline, held loosely (smoothing 0.1), through 29 places read from the scan — the crossings of the ruled 42nd and 43rd parallels with the meridians from 124° to 119° west of Greenwich, the coast from the Coquille to Crescent City, Jacksonville, Pilot Rock, Mount McLoughlin, the Klamath, Tule, Clear, Goose, Summer and Abert lakes, and the north end and outlet of Klamath Marsh — and matched to their positions today. The ruled graticule is drawn true, but the field sketching between the lines is looser: against its own graticule the map draws Klamath Marsh about 25 km east of where it lies. The marsh is pulled to within about 10 km of its place, which stretches the sheet between it and the 121st meridian to about twice its drawn width east–west; elsewhere most places fall within 5 km. The Deschutes country north of about 43½° is placed by the graticule alone. Lake Harney and the Owyhee country, drawn some 45 km out of place, are masked with the legend and the table of distances. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-16 |
| Covers | Oregon, California |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (1.3 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (7078 × 2901; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (2.1 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 (2026-10-16): First release: placed by hand at 29 places. From the National Archives (NAID 93193315, RG 77, US 324-97) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the National Archives (NAID 93193315, RG 77, US 324-97) 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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