Map of wagon routes in Utah Territory
Captain James H. Simpson’s map of the wagon routes he explored and opened across the Great Basin in 1858–59, west from Camp Floyd and Salt Lake City to Genoa in Carson Valley, with the earlier routes of Stansbury, Frémont, Gunnison and Beckwith. Across what is now central Nevada it gives valleys and ranges the Western Shoshone names Simpson’s party recorded — Pah-hun-nupe Valley, Won-a-ho-nupe Valley, the Too-muntz and Pah-re-ah ranges — and it shows Utah Lake, the Jordan valley and the Utah settlements of the time.
Source
| Map | Map of wagon routes in Utah Territory |
|---|---|
| Author | Capt. J. H. Simpson, Topl. Engrs., U.S.A.; drawn by J. P. Mechlin, 1859 |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1859 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 20 km (RMS 2.1 km at 74 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 (the sheet’s two halves are joined within about 3 km of each other), but the map draws places 3–17 km from where its graticule puts them (Sacramento is furthest), so read it to within about 20 km away from the seven anchors. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a smoothing thin-plate spline through the sheet’s one-degree graticule (crossings from a polyconic fit to 29 ticks read off its lines, 1 km) and seven places — Salt Lake City, Camp Floyd, Provo, Nephi, Fort Bridger, Sacramento and the centre of Lake Bigler (Tahoe); 74 points in all. The sheet was fetched at 12,000 of its 15,323 pixels. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-06 |
| Covers | Utah, Nevada, California, Wyoming |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (3.4 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 3630; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (13.2 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (3.2 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 (2026-10-06): First release: placed by hand at 74 places. From the Native Routes sources register; Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (2012586633).
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (2012586633)
- 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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